


Properties of Zero

by tb_ll57



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, But kind of wants to be, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Everybody Lives, M/M, OZ wins the war, Politics, Post-Endless Waltz, Psychic Bond, Psychic Violence, Quatre is not that innocent, Resistance, Rough Sex, ZERO is not your friend, ZERO may not be your enemy either, Zechs is not a great person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-04-23 00:35:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14320593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: Four years after the war, Zechs is an embittered relic wrapped up in his own suffering. A chance meeting with Quatre Winner may lead to something more, if Zechs is willing to try. If ZERO will let him.





	1. One

The large group of well-dressed politicians gathered before the man-sized fireplace erupted into laughter again. Zechs, the moody rebel exiled to the champagne bar, barely glanced their way. The whimsically named ‘Star Chamber’ was aglow with candles and the gleaming white petals of lilies arranged in frothy, massive bouquets between each twelve-foot-tall window. It was a room made to impress its visitors with its wealth and extravagance; it was a room that invited touch and scent and admiration. The walls panelled in Indonesian rosewood were polished by age and care to a luminous dark violet. The floors were marble tiled in a cream and black diamond pattern, buffed free of all scuff marks and impervious to the punishing heels of fancy court shoes. The ceiling was a magnificent plaster and gilt affair, a rendition of astrological heavens and symbolisms flickering eerily in the candlelight. The pre-Raphaelite art that hung from ceiling to chair-height in the delicate alcoves was gracious and warm in colouration. Zechs himself had been standing beneath the strong-jawed, pouting Helen of Troy for the past hour, contemplating the burning city behind her mane of fiery red curls.  
  
Treize Khushrenada bore her a rather remarkable resemblance. Perhaps that was why he’d gone out of his way to secure the purchase of the famous Rossetti painting, now some four centuries old and more valuable than the entire herd of Khushrenada’s pure-bred racing stallions.  
  
But Treize had been surrounded by nothing but the best and the beautiful since his very conception. The castle he stood in presently was a massive reconstruction of fairy tales and chivalric romance, a travertine fantasy that had been likened to Avalon. Acquiring the ageing but still elegant and impressive Bolsover Castle had been something of a coup for Khushrenada, another feather in a cap already over-burdened with riches. Rising white-walled and proud from its hill-top command, Bolsover was the perfect mirror of its owner: deceptive in its preening prettiness, a monument to a dream of peace built on steel and blood.  
  
Zechs was bitter, and inclined to enjoy it.  
  
The dinner tables with their blinding white drapes had been whisked away by efficient servants, leaving only the lingering scent of chocolate truffle and mint. Musicians played classical strains from the corner, while a few couples and bored children used the freed room space to create an impromptu dance floor. Champagne poured liberally from the fountain Zechs stood beside, perched amid banks of lilies like a scene out of Eden. Brandy and cognac passed amongst old men now drunkenly recounting warrior tales from the old days. His sister, Relena Peacecraft, stood with her coterie of young women, probably students of her School of Pacifism, marked for their conservative dress and determined expressions. They were as out-of-place in this evening of indulgence as Zechs himself was. Relena was tired but hard-eyed, holding fast to her few allies with promises she couldn’t keep and desperate undertones beneath her small smiles.  
  
And there was Treize, drifting from group to group, never anything but the consummate host. His uniform of royal blue was immaculate, his ginger hair slick and gleaming, his smiling mouth murmuring charming phrases without any hint of insincerity. If his glance was deliberately skipping over the young man who had once been his right-hand, and in the end his enemy, it was far too subtle to notice.  
  
Zechs didn’t have to notice. He knew. It would have taken far too much effort to deny it, or even to care about it. One day his sullen presence would cease to be amusing, and Treize would let him go. He could play the waiting game, and he could win it. He was no longer a favourite toy, after all.  
  
There was a crash at the other end of the champagne bar, followed by a muffled curse. Zechs and some hundred pairs of eyes turned to the disturbance, faced by a flushed young man attempting to mop a spill and broken glass before the servers shooed him away. As Zechs watched, Quatre Winner ran a hand through mussed golden hair in unguarded embarrassment. He seemed to shrivel under the silent amusement of the room, accepting a new glass with hunched shoulders.  
  
Zechs felt the sneer on his own face a moment before Winner’s eyes skipped to him. He didn’t trouble to hide it. He made sure, in fact, to brush disdainfully against Winner’s sleeve as he passed the smaller man by. He directed his steps to one of the smaller balconies. He usually found himself on the balcony at some point in the night, protected from the rest of the party-goers by the veneer of privacy afforded by sumptuous velvet drapery. The air was fresher outside, marred only by the burnt scent of torches. Bolsover’s lush, un-manicured garden lawn spread three storeys below, mocking him with its unchecked, free growth. A magnificent full moon completed the scene.  
  
The Prince on the balcony, he thought. Trapped in the tower of the evil lord.  
  
He snorted. “Fuck,” he said aloud, just to hear the harsh word shatter the perfection that seethed everywhere around him. “Fuck it all.”  
  
The rustle of the drapes was his answer. Zechs turned quickly, and found himself facing Winner again. The younger man stood hesitating in the doorway, reluctant to pass through it. Zechs kept a cool expression meant to discourage him, but if anything, it achieved the opposite. Winner’s back straightened, and his shoulders took on a set of confidence. He inclined his head to Zechs, and stepped onto the balcony, walking to the rail as if his interruption were welcome.  
  
They had fought a war on each other, once. Zechs had tried very hard to take this man’s life. Boy. He’d been only a boy then, and when they’d at last stood face to face, Zechs had been struck by how small, how fragile a boy could be. Quatre Winner had been bleeding like a stuck pig on the floor of an overwhelmed satellite infirmary. And Zechs had walked past him in irons, already arrested and headed for prison.  
  
But tonight was four years later, and Zechs didn’t think the circumstances had improved much.  
  
He stirred himself to speak. "You're having a good time, too?" he said lazily, looking out at the gardens. Lamps burned like stars amid the wisteria.  
  
Winner attempted to ignore him for a moment. At last, however, courtesy won out, and in a small, polite voice, he answered, "I had more fun in high-grav simulation training."  
  
It was not the tepid denial he’d been expecting. Zechs found himself grinning off into the night. He didn’t bother to pitch his voice low as he confided, "I had more fun on ZERO."  
  
Winner’s wheat-coloured head whipped about, but Zechs wasn’t looking for the sharp gaze no doubt spearing him with disapproval. Winner said flatly, "That's not funny."  
  
“Then you haven't had enough champagne."  
  
"You must have had, if you can even say it aloud," Winner muttered, shifting a little away from him. Zechs glanced across the stones separating them, not surprised to see Winner leaning over the railing, his drink clutched in tense hands, a little scowl decorating his round face.  
  
"Baggage?" Zechs mocked him delicately.  
  
That little scowl deepened, then disappeared. Zechs wondered why even as Winner replied, “I don't think blowing things up while under mind-altering influences is amusing to the people who got hurt."  
  
"We're not helping them by wallowing in guilt or whining about our scars,” he countered. “Are we?"  
  
"I'm not doing either. You're clearly not."  
  
"Why should I?" Zechs twirled his flute between two fingers, disliking the unbalanced bowl with its delicate golden stem. "It wasn't my fault."  
  
There was a pause. Zechs supposed he was being judged. Winner asked, “You feel completely absolved of all blame?" but his voice was only curious, not even irked.  
  
It gave him a pause. He weighed his answers before giving one. "I didn't say that," he said.  
  
Winner huffed a little, amusingly. "That's what it sounded like," he groused. Zechs was smiling more than he had in years.  
  
He explained, "I don't hold myself accountable for my actions on ZERO. I credit someone else for that."  
  
Winner faced him more fully. He wore a suit of creamy wool crepe, in one of those distinctly colonial cuts that emphasized a trim figure and straight shoulders. The jacket had no lapels and hung opened, without a pearl button or leather pipe in sight, and instead of a tie or neck-cloth he wore only a loose scarf of deep burgundy cashmere. Compared to Zechs in his stodgy, militaristic European fashion, Winner looked like a modern young fashion model, casually gorgeous, tricked out to out-shine the shapeless, wilting aristocrats who loitered in velvet and lace inside. Zechs was suddenly struck by the picture Winner presented. He couldn’t help but hold it side by side with memory, of a fifteen year old boy in khaki trousers and salmon school shirt. Or the fifteen year old boy in the neoprene flight suit, bleeding to death in a crumbling infirmary as he insisted more grievously injured pilots receive care first.  
  
He wasn’t sure entirely why, but the change pleased him. He wanted to reach out and pull at the scarf, throw it over the balcony. He closed both hands about his untouched champagne, instead.  
  
He said, "Are you waiting for a confession or an explanation?"  
  
Winner did nothing so graceless as shrug, but it seemed implicit in the dip of his girlishly long eyelashes against his cheeks. "Whatever you feel like giving," he returned with grave courtesy.  
  
Zechs snorted. "I'm not used to giving anything to anyone. I rather doubt you are either. Would you have done it if you'd known, Winner? ZERO. Would you?"  
  
He’d won a brief moment of– a brief look of shock, perhaps. But gone very quickly into consideration. Possibly Winner had only been surprised by his uncouth disregard of the pleasantries.  
  
After nearly a minute, Winner said, "To be honest, I'm not sure that I didn't know."  
  
It was a good answer. Zechs rather liked it. "Huh," he murmured.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
He grinned down at the gravel paths and concentric hedges. “You knew."  
  
He didn’t have to look to see that Winner was not pleased with him. The huff was back in his voice, not quite sharp, not quite smooth. "You fancy yourself a good judge of men, don't you."  
  
He laughed aloud. "I'm a horrible judge of character."  
  
"Our old friend Treize?" Winner guessed.  
  
Zechs tilted his head. He admitted blandly, "There was a time when I felt I owed him everything."  
  
Winner slowly relaxed against the old iron railing. "I take it that said time had passed once you started firing on Earth from Libra," he said cautiously.  
  
“Yes, but then most people know that. I'm sure our break was widely discussed in the Rebel camp," he added, probing just a little.  
  
Winner gave nothing away. "It may have been. I spent a fair amount of time a prisoner, in those days."  
  
He was immediately weary, and not a little full of despair. He heard it in his tone when he whispered, "You were a prisoner the entire war. We both were."  
  
The younger man hesitated. Zechs sensed movement, perhaps a hand reaching toward him in instinctive gentleness. He’d once possessed that kind of compassion for his fellow man. It had long since dissolved and left him this sour shell.  
  
He was going to be worth nothing, tonight.  
  
"I suppose I'm more accountable because I was an adult," he said abruptly. He set his glass on the flat part of the rail before him, and rocked it with a single finger. Winner didn’t answer, neither confirmed nor denied, and very soon he tired of waiting. He toppled the fragile flute over the edge, listening for the tinkle of it shattering in the shrubbery two storeys below. It was, at least, a satisfying sound, a petty victory against the man inside who would never know Zechs had willfully destroyed his glassware.  
  
"He crossed a lot of lines," he told Winner. "He enjoyed watching the ensuing carnage."  
  
A throat cleared, barely more than an exhalation. "You think so?"  
  
Zechs could still feel the impression of the glass cool against his fingertips. "No," he said.  
  
Winner frowned at him. Irritated, Zechs devoutly hoped. From the periphery of his vision he watched Winner tug that lush scarf from about his own neck and stuff it deep into his trousers pocket, the fringed edges swinging about his knees like the ends of a sash. His fingers plucked beneath his throat, popping the top button of his pale shirt. Zechs wanted to chuckle, meant to, because he was amused at how little it had taken, but the impulse died when Winner spoke.  
  
"This is who you are now, isn't it. Hiding in corners, waiting for someone to show up who'll listen while you hate yourself."  
  
That irritated him. He glanced at Winner, found eyes more green than blue waiting for him. Rudely, he said, "You followed me out here. Why?"  
  
Unaccountably Winner flushed the same scattered blush as the clumsy young man who broke glasses at the champagne bar. It was not the look of the man who had been talking to him the past few minutes. In an embarrassed, apologetic mumble, Winner answered, "Your sister was headed in my direction. But she doesn't go near you."  
  
He bared his teeth in something that might have been a smile, but didn’t feel like one. "That's true. She hates me more than I do."  
  
"She doesn't hate you. You make her sad."  
  
"And you're in a position to know this how?"  
  
Winner glanced up, the pink in his cheeks warring with the self-deprecating tilt of his chin. After a moment, he murmured, "I'm hardly moved to give up my entire hand in one conversation."  
  
"Are we playing a game?" he asked solemnly.  
  
Winner’s mouthed turned up in a surprisingly sweet expression. "Aren't we?"  
  
He didn’t want to respond to the challenge, and the friendship, offered in that. "I didn't think so," he muttered.  
  
"I think you like games. But if you don't want to play, then I yield."  
  
In a woman, that might have been flirtatious. Had it been Treize, Zechs might have had to fight the urge to fling a fist in his face. But it was Quatre Winner, and there was something– something.  
  
He didn’t accept the offer.  
  
"So what did it feel like?” He looked at Winner again. “ZERO."  
  
Winner sighed, and put his back to the railing, leaning on it and gazing through the draperies at the party still ongoing inside. He said, "Like a friend, when I was convinced I was alone."  
  
Zechs found himself nodding in agreement. There was something thrilling in that confession. In hearing it stated so precisely. So perfectly. "In retrospect, I prefer solitude," he answered.  
  
Winner smiled for a moment, but it faded. A moment later, he said, "I still hear it." He paused. Zechs waited for the rest. "Mostly when I'm dreaming,” Winner murmured. “But sometimes during the day."  
  
"The have drugs for that, you know," Zechs said. He snorted softly. "They don't work very well."  
  
"I know," Winner agreed briefly.  
  
Silence fell between them. Zechs turned back to the darkened lawn, wishing there was something out there but emptiness. "It won't be over until we're dead," he said moodily.  
  
He almost didn’t catch it. It was just a slight thing, a little unconscious movement, not deliberately hidden. Winner was rubbing his own left wrist on the inside, rubbing his thumb across it without even looking down, completely unaware of his action. But Zechs did see it. And he knew. It made his throat oddly tight.  
  
"Didn't help, did it?"  
  
Winner looked up, blinking. "Hm?" It was a moment before he discovered his own hands before him. Zechs watched comprehension follow, but not regret. "Not appreciably," Winner admitted.  
  
He made his own outreach, though he wasn’t sure it was compassion that motivated it. Fascination, certainly. Perhaps solidarity. He turned Winner’s wrist up, into the candlelight that illuminated their balcony. He pushed the sleeve back from the tender skin of Winner’s hand, examining the pale, abraded scars, overlapping the length of the man’s wrist. When he brushed them with his thumb, he could feel the slight lip of flesh beneath the healed surface that meant a deep cut not entirely fused.  
  
"That's not the most efficient way to cut if you're serious," he said. He traced a perpendicular line up the creamy smooth sleeve of Winner’s jacket, along the tendons hiding underneath. A moment later he released Winner. There was a breathless intimacy in that touch, and it was too much. He saw it reflected in Winner’s eyes, wide as they looked up at him.  
  
And very serious. "Was I trying to die, do you think?" Winner asked him.  
  
"I think you thought you were," he said.  
  
Winner laughed suddenly. It was oddly boyish, but his reaction to it wasn’t. He wondered if he should feel guilty for being turned on.  
  
"It was a dinner knife,” the young man said. “I hid it under my pillow all night. I was sure someone would find me and take it away."  
  
Zechs leaned against the railing. "Did they?"  
  
In answer Winner held up his other hand, tugging the sleeve down. The right wrist was whole and untouched.  
  
He managed a pained smile. "Treize once ordered my suicide." If it had been another man, he might have glanced away as he said it, but it was Winner, who hadn’t during his own revelation, and he would be at least that strong. They had gone beyond the point of hiding anything now. And maybe it made him feel a little better to say, "I would have done it if he hadn't."  
  
Winner nodded. "But you didn't die."  
  
"Nor did you." He shrugged again. "It's early yet,” he said brusquely. “There's time."  
  
"Do you think you could, now?"  
  
"I stop myself nearly every day."  
  
"Do you?" Winner propped his elbows on the rail, and let his head fall back. His throat was strong and pale in the night. "Or does ZERO?"  
  
Zechs closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. There was a space between his eyes where a headache wanted to form. "I don't listen to ZERO any more," he said.  
  
He knew it was a lie before it left his lips. It fell flat on the air like one, too. Winner said nothing, but his silence was wise.  
  
"Do they talk about it?" Zechs felt moved to ask. He looked at Winner again, studied the profile with its stubborn jaw and up-tilted nose and fringe of flax-like hair brushing over the cheekbones and curling to hide the shell of his ear, a thing that was both enticing and strange. It made his fingers itch the way the scars on the inside of Winner’s wrist had.  
  
"Who?"  
  
"The rest of them. You know."  
  
Winner made a little acknowledging noise. "Why should they have? They rejected it. It was over for them as soon as they did." His lashes rose over the green irises and dark pupils. He looked at Zechs fully. "Does Treize?"  
  
"I don't talk to Treize. Not about anything that matters."

 

He got a flash of small white teeth for that. "I think I rather like you, tonight," Winner murmured.  
  
Zechs raised an eyebrow in reply. "Freak."  
  
Winner grinned, and let his head fall back again. His eyes closed, and didn’t open.  
  
The silence was longer this time, reflective, companionable. And not. There was a darkness lying underneath. Zechs tried to remember when he’d gotten so lonely that a few minutes of sympathetic understanding were enough to break him down, when he had stood proud and alone for so many long years. Tried to decide if Winner’s calm was soothing or annoying. If he envied it, or even believed it.  
  
He said, "Are you tired of isolating yourself because of what you might do?"  
  
Again, he didn’t get the answer he expected. "I'm never alone," Winner said. He gestured jerkily, and Zechs looked toward the doorway. There were people on the other side– and now that he listened for it he noticed the rise of conversation inside, the talk louder with the amplification of alcohol. He thought someone inside glanced out to them, as well, but he wasn’t sure and didn’t truly care.  
  
"Rubbish,” he said. “They're nothing. They don't touch you."  
  
"They watch me because I have to be watched. And because they watch me, I behave."  
  
"I'd've thought you'd be better at it than that."  
  
"Better at it?"  
  
"Handling it."  
  
Something sad moved over Winner’s moon-round face, and slipped away a moment later. “I thought that, too, until I stole a dinner knife."  
  
Zechs turned his back on the party inside. "Some people would say you should see someone."  
  
“Are you some people?"  
  
No, he thought, I am not. I never have been. Aloud, he retorted, "I don't believe in therapy."  
  
"Then I don't see why you bother to say it."  
  
"Because clearly you need something you aren't giving yourself."  
  
"If I needed it-- don't you think ZERO would find a way for me to get it?"  
  
That made him look. "ZERO hates you. That's why it stays."  
  
Abruptly Winner faced the railing as well, though his eyes stayed shut. "It stays because it needs me. If I die, it dies." His hands spread along the top rung of the rail, smoothing along the iron in a whimsical caress. "We're partners-- perhaps unwilling now. But I take some satisfaction from the state of things. I have what it wants."  
  
He absorbed that, examined it for truth. "What's it have for you?"  
  
Winner was thoughtful, the tilt of his head oddly enchanting. It was some time before he answered, and it pleased Zechs that his question had been so carefully considered.  
  
"Something to fight," Winner told him finally.  
  
The view of the grounds had not changed since he’d last focused on it. It hadn’t changed in all the time since Treize had bought it and begun sending coy invitations to a former lover, a former friend, a conquered foe.  
  
"I never bother,” Zechs said. “I hate losing."  
  
Winner chuckled. “You were on the wrong side of the war for too long. The rebels learned to use each defeat to make them stronger."  
  
"Oh, is that what I'm missing?” Zechs asked wryly. “The masochist gene?"  
  
"It's easy enough to win. It's harder to survive."  
  
"Survival is overrated." He hesitated, but not for long– he never had, really. Decision made, he quickly shed his heavy jacket, and his left cufflink, dropping it carelessly to the balcony. He swiftly rolled his sleeve up and held his arm out between them. "I believe in anaesthesia,” he growled, defiantly displaying the track marks that marred his tan skin, a line of broken veins and blotchy purple bruises, the punctured sores in the crook of his elbow that were slow to heal. "ZERO isn't easily silenced,” he said grimly, “but it can be done."  
  
He waited for the pity, but got none. He expected the sympathy from earlier, but strangely, there was none of that, either. He’d never voluntarily shown his habit to anyone else, and he felt– he felt, which was more than he had had in a long time.  
  
He felt relieved.  
  
Winner studied his arm for a long time, but he didn’t touch, as Zechs had done. At last, he said, "You do it often."  
  
"Often enough."  
  
"What does it feel like?"  
  
He managed a laugh. "Oblivion."  
  
Winner’s face turned up to his then. "Show me."  
  
He dropped his arm, automatically unrolling his sleeve. “Show you what?”  
  
"What it feels like."  
  
Comprehension shocked him almost mindless. "You're asking me to get you high?"  
  
Winner straightened. "I can pay you back, if that's what you're worried about."  
  
It took a moment to find his voice again. "It's not something you can do once and walk away from,” he said harshly. The words to explain, to dissuade, to deny wouldn’t come to him, and all he could stutter was a useless protest. The truth, worth less than usual. “Winner. It's not-- It's worse than ZERO."  
  
"There's nothing worse than ZERO. Is there?"  
  
Winner was too calm. Eyebrows a little raised, hands loose at his side, not demanding, not prodding. Waiting for him to agree.  
  
The party inside went on without taking notice of their sudden tension. Of Zechs’s horror, and Winner’s awful request. Zechs found himself picturing Winner’s arm looking like his, that left arm with its scars blemished with fresh disfigurements. The pupils of those large green eyes constricted to tiny drugged points. The hands trembling, the bright hair lank with stale sweat, the gently rounded cheeks sunken and starved. Like him.  
  
He could do it. In an hour, maybe less, he could reduce Quatre Winner to a reflection of him. Damn him to a new kind of hell for trying to escape the old one.  
  
"Let's go," he said.

 

  
  
**  
  


  
They were quiet during the ride back to Zechs’s place. All that could have been said between them had been cut short by Winner's simple request. Show me, he’d said. As if it were that easy, and he’d walk away after. Only ZERO spoke, taunting him. The silent whispers warned him that no amount of drugs would quiet Winner’s inner demons. But it would be something to watch. Beautiful.  
  
He turned down his street. The row of townhouses on either side of his street were an eery white, ghostly and leering in the darkness. Motion-sensing street lamps lit their way up the wide, empty road. Zechs toggled his lights to low, and said, "I'm not going to ask you if you're sure again."  
  
Winner stirred from gazing out the window. "Saying that is as much as asking me, Zechs," he answered. He almost sounded amused, as if he didn’t realize the gravity of what was about to be done to him. Addiction would be swift; not so much to the drug itself, but to the quiet and the sense that the beast lay leashed and still, far enough distant to be manageable.  
  
_Lie to him like you lie to yourself,_ ZERO murmured.  
  
Zechs turned onto his drive, and parked outside the garage. His keys were chilled and clammy in his palm. Winner opened his door and stood, stretching his legs while Zechs turned off the car and exited himself. Their eyes met over the hood. Zechs nodded, at what he wasn’t quite sure, and then they fell into step as they climbed the stairs to the front door. Zechs unlocked it, and gestured Winner in before him to the small foyer.  
  
“No mirrors,” Winner said, as Zechs closed them in.  
  
“No. I don’t like them.” He dropped his keys onto the marble table-top that held a bouquet of fake flowers and a framed Hasegawa watercolour that he'd never quite looked at before. Winner looked at it, picking up the frame carefully and examining it.  
  
Zechs toed off his shoes into the pile of footwear that lived beside the door, and shucked his outer coat. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Take off your jacket and shirt."  
  
Winner obeyed, neither fast or slow, dropping them onto the chair that stood beside the hall table. Zechs led the way into his den, stripping himself of his waistcoat and shirt as he walked. Winner sat, bare-chested and faintly luminous in the dark, on Zechs’s leather couch, watching him the way a prisoner's eyes followed his interrogator, wondering, afraid of what unknown pain would come next.  
  
The old Davenport desk was empty but for one drawer, and that drawer held only a soft leather pouch. One half of it was the syringe and needles-- he only kept a handful at a time, too fastidious to entertain the thought of dull points. In the other half was his tourniquet, a thin leather strap coiled neatly in the case. Last, in a soft slip of velvet, the metal spoon, polished carefully free of tarnish, and the Ronson coronet lighter with the chipped black enamel that always warmed quickly to the touch. The powder was deceptively unimpressive, bagged in thumbnail-sized twists. Everything was ready exactly as it was needed, and had been for three years, from almost the first time he'd tried it. Tried, thinking he was above it, thinking he could conquer any man-made hell, even ZERO.  
  
"Zechs?"  
  
_Zechs,_ it mocked. _Rescue him, hero._  
  
The powder melted cleanly on the spoon when Zechs held the lighter beneath it. The astringent smell was filling the air, a smell so familiar now that he hadn’t even noticed it in years. But having Winner there, experiencing it all for the first time, brought a sharpness, a clarity to the ritual that he hadn’t had since the beginning. He felt a little high already. His hands trembled about the needle as he inserted it into the syringe, and carefully gathered the bubbling drug from the bowl of the spoon.  
  
Winner was all watchful eyes, only the fists protectively closed over his bare stomach any indication of nerves and regret. But he offered his arm, when Zechs made a perfunctory gesture. "Tell me what happens," he said.  
  
Zechs tied the tourniquet about the younger man’s firm biceps, and pulled it tight. "The needle will sting,” he replied, picking it up. “The drug will burn. It's not unpleasant. They call it Cloud 9, superfine. It's--” He fumbled for a descriptor, an adjective, a crumb of sanity. “It feels like the best sex you ever had, the best flight you ever flew, the-- the cusp of gravity on re-entry. Until you pass out."  
  
"And when I wake up?"  
  
"You'll want it again as soon as possible." He didn’t want to think about that part. About his part in doing that to this man who wore his innocence like a second skin. He gazed down at the vicious little point of the needle instead. "But you won't hear it any more,” he added. “Not really."  
  
_Liar._  
  
Winner nodded once, his understanding and his acceptance. Zechs took hold of his warm arm again, and smacked at the vein in the forearm until it popped, strong and blue beneath Winner's pale skin. The needle slipped in smoothly, barely meeting resistance from solid flesh. When it sat firmly planted, he lifted his eyes to Winner’s, waiting for, half expecting, some indication of panic, demurral, fear.  
  
Winner looked back at him, and then his lips curved into a sudden, sweet smile.  
  
That nearly stopped him. The panic he’d been expecting to see welled in his own chest, and before thought had caught up with him he had retracted the needle, leaving behind a little drop of blood in Winner’s forearm.  
  
"You don't want this,” he whispered. “And maybe I don't want to give it to you."  
  
Winner’s soft lips parted for a shaky breath. "That-- that would be your choice. I made mine."  
  
It was a massive effort to push the fear away. But it went, and he locked it down, and he steeled himself until his hands were steady once again and his gut had stilled and he could breathe again. He made himself take Winner’s arm again, roll the vein with his thumb to bring it back to the surface. When he slipped the needle in this time, he didn’t give himself a chance to pause before he pressed the plunger down, and injected Winner with half the contents of the syringe. Then, quickly, he pulled the tourniquet from Winner’s biceps and tied it about his own. He jabbed himself at the elbow, and gave himself the rest. It burnt like acid going in, but it was followed by heat, an electric tingle. His heart hammered fast, faster, a frantic tempo that matched the evaporating weight of the rest of him, the lightheaded swoon. He dropped the strap to the floor, and the empty syringe to the table; and then he put his hand on Winner’s neck and pulled him close to kiss him.  
  
Their mouths mashed together with a click of teeth and a slight sting from a cut lip, but Winner responded with far more passion than Zechs had hoped for. Fingers thrust into his hair, holding his head tightly as a tongue met his like a fencer engaging in a duel.  
  
When they separated to breathe, Zechs said hoarsely, "It's better when you share.” He watched Winner’s face through eyes going hazy, watched colour creep over the round cheeks and moonlight paint silver into the lacy eyelashes and fine fringe over his brow. "I could fuck you now,” he whispered. “You wouldn't even care."  
  
The wide eyes fluttered closed. Winner brought a handful of Zechs's hair to his nose and mouth, turned his cheek against the strands. Something caught in Zechs’s throat, watching that, feeling the tiny pinpricks of the movement against his own scalp, every little touch magnified from that throbbing point in his arm. Winner was pliant, almost sleepy as Zechs pushed him down on the cushions of the couch; he kept his hold on Zechs’s hair, his fingers working through the long strands as he lay back. Zechs unhooked the splendid creamy trousers and pulled them roughly down. He drove one hand into Winner’s hair, gripped his head hard, and held him pinned for a second hard kiss, punishing the soft mouth and pushing his tongue so deep that his own jaw ached from the strain. The violence of his own emotion made him shaky, but Winner took it, sucked him deeper.  
  
He was hot and breathless and shaking. He thought-- the last thought, the last capacity for thought-- he hoped it was real, and not the drug. He didn't hope not to regret it in the morning. He would. It would be waiting there, a new sin ripe for self-flagellation. But he wished he'd at least warned Winner-- ZERO wasn't the only danger here.  
  
He wrenched Winner’s undershorts down his thighs and wrapped his hand around Winner’s cock. It was already hard, and the pad of his thumb slipped in the warm fluid leaking from the tip. He slid down the creaking couch until his head was level with Winner’s hips. He held Winner’s cock tight as he swallowed it, gripped it like a toy or a stick, not a living man's most private anatomy. Winner's knees were in his way-- deliberate? Instinctive self-defence? Twisting legs hampered by the rustling trousers and Zechs' own bodyweight, but once he had his mouth on Winner's cock all movement stilled. Hands pressed at his shoulders urgently, but it was the chest-deep, throaty plunge into surrender that had his head swimming.  
  
The couch whined as Winner grabbed the cushion behind his head to anchor himself. Zechs worked slowly, savouring it for them both. He knew what it felt like to get head while high: every sensation would be heightened, every nerve on fire. But it was better to give it. He felt powerful, almost invincible. Every little sound he wrung from Winner was another victory, every uncontrollable twitch and shudder. He wanted to rake Winner over coals. He wanted Winner to scream.  
  
His tongue and teeth produced a helpless little cry, and Winner turned his face away. He slid his hands up taut thigh muscles and forced Winner's legs wider apart. He shook his hair over his shoulders so that it draped across Winner’s groin. He ghosted his fingers over Winner’s torso and shoulders and down his heaving sides, finding shivery places. He pulled almost hungrily at the thing in his mouth, but it was the rest of it that fed him until he ached.  
  
Glazed, wide eyes met his, then, when he stopped to wet his fingers. Not so innocent that he didn't know what meant; but Winner just lay limp beneath him, watching, waiting for it. Zechs took his time, imprinting the sight for the hazy memory he would have in the morning, for the dreams that would linger and twist and taunt. For ZERO, which would surely find a way to punish him, to throw back every second of it as a nightmare. But his first finger went in, rubbing the pucker between Winner's cheeks, slipping in almost as if invited, one knuckle, two, until he was as deep as he could go. Winner's eyes squeezed shut. Zechs teased his tongue along the slit in the red, saliva-sheened head of Winner’s cock, licking away new beads of salty pre-ejaculate. At the invasion of a second finger, Winner bit his lips together in concentrated silence.  
  
ZERO was silent, too. It was gagged now, forced to watch without intervening, but it would get even later. But for now, for now, it was quietened, and Zechs reveled in it.  
  
Winner's small nipple peaked under his fingers, drawing tight as he pulled on it ruthlessly. Winner's chest was smooth and hairless, sweat breaking out in a damp spread over his skin. He sucked in his stomach when Zechs bit him there, leaving his marks, sucking to raise a blood bruise.  
  
"Z-Zechs?” Winner whispered. Maybe. Maybe it was “Stop.”  
  
Zechs licked down the length of Winner’s cock before he answered. "Come,” he said, and forced Winner's cock flat over his belly to lave them both with broad strokes of his tongue. He pressed his fingers deep into Winner's tight warm body, as hard as he could, shoving at the fleshy mound inside until Winner cried out in protest, jerking like a puppet on invisible strings. Jism coated Zechs' tongue in hot pulses. He quickly shook his hair away, staring down at the spray of pale fluid on Winner's heaving chest.  
  
His mind was fogging. The clarity was slipping away, the bright edges and the sharp corners. He drifted, forgetting where he was, why he was. It wasn't urgent anymore. It didn't seem to matter much.  
  
It was almost with surprise that he discovered Winner there beneath him again. He ran a gentle hand over the softening member as he let it go. There was no way to be gentle removing his fingers from Winner's rectum-- whatever spit he'd had to begin with had dried, and it had to sting. Winner was all golden lithe body shivering at each centimetre, all quivering thigh muscles and gut clenched against the hurt. I'm sorry, Zechs almost said, but he was voiceless, and there it was, the evidence of his crime, and his ruthlessness, his worthlessness. No gravity well had ever plunged him into so sudden a depression. It was like all light had disappeared. He had never felt it so severely after such a high. He could barely breathe.  
  
He made himself arrange Winner's limp limbs comfortably. Winner was beyond doing it for himself. It had taken months for Zechs to learn to ride this dragon, to keep some part of himself aware through the storm. Poor Quatre never stood a chance against it. He lay as if unconscious, but his face was sad, his eyelids hovering almost closed. He brushed Zechs’s arm when he leaned over the young man to slip a pillow behind his head.  
  
"You'll probably want to sleep now," Zechs told him.  
  
"What... about you?"  
  
He consciously kept his expression closed, unsure how much Quatre could even register at this phase. “I can call someone for you, but it's better if you wait,” he explained softly. "They'll have questions. Concerns." He left the couch and slipped into the stuffed chair that sat at an angle to the sofa and the table, littered with the remains of their experiment. "I'll watch you," he added, from some darker impulse that waned into worry and despair.  
  
With a little sigh, Quatre turned onto his stomach, draped flat against the couch cushions with his arms close to his chest. It made Zechs think oddly of little children, and the curve of Quatre’s cheek where it pressed to the pillow didn’t dispel the illusion, nor his strangely anxious eyes.  
  
"Have my back," Quatre muttered muzzily.  
  
Zechs nodded. "I have your back."  
  
He exhaled softly, and closed his eyes. "Thank you."  
  
"Thank me in the morning," Zechs murmured. When you realise what I’ve made you, he finished silently. He thought of pushing Quatre out the door as soon as the sun rose, of calling a cab and sending him home with a brusque fare-well. As midnight crept into the early hours of morning, he even let himself think of other things– things that might happen if Quatre stayed. And in a moment of wretched weakness, he left the chair, and climbed carefully onto the couch to lower himself behind Quatre. The other man settled into his hold without even a sound, and the feel of Quatre’s warm smooth skin under his hand let him float in those imaginings for a little while longer.

 

  
  
**  
  


  
The birds had been calling to each other for an hour before Quatre woke. He stirred slowly, first turning his face into the pillow and then stretching his legs. And then he yawned, and said, “Hello.”  
  
Zechs’s voice was froggy, and he cleared his throat. "You were cold," he said, preparing to leave the couch. But Quatre only nodded, and pulled Zechs’s arm tighter about his shoulders.  
  
Zechs said, "I'll make some coffee," but he didn’t move.  
  
Quatre laughed a little. "I don't drink coffee," he answered.  
  
"Turn around. I want to see your eyes."  
  
He squirmed about obediently, and let Zechs take hold of his chin without protest. His pupils were returned to their normal size, the irises a more muddled colour than Zechs remembered. The daggers of fine hair that fell down his forehead brushed softly away beneath Zechs’s fingers.  
  
“Did it work?” Zechs asked him sombrely.  
  
Quatre smiled at him, a little upturning of his chapped lips that made sleepy crinkles about his eyes and a little dimple beside his mouth. Zechs touched the tip of his pointer finger into the dimple, a little amazed to see it there. But the eyes told the story. They slid away from Zechs’ examination.  
  
“You were right before,” Quatre murmured. “I just like to suffer."  
  
“I don't know what that means," he confessed. He thought he might, though.  
  
"You don't have to." Quatre nudged a knee against Zechs’s, then a little higher, against his lower thigh. Asking entrance. Zechs gave it, and Quatre sighed as he slid his leg between Zechs’s, hip coming to rest pressed against his twitching groin, the fabric of their trousers whispering suggestively.  
  
“Did it work?” he asked again.  
  
"You can say it worked," Quatre said.  
  
"I'm not sure I want to let you out of my sight." Quatre’s eyes opened wide enough to look at him for a moment; then they slid shut again, the lashes spreading in little curved clumps over the bruised-looking, tender skin beneath.  
  
"I didn't think you'd make me leave," he answered gravely. "Did we..."  
  
There was no way of denying it, with Quatre naked and himself still shirtless. With Quatre in his arms. If there was memory of it, that would remain to be seen. His battered heart was beating faster, guilt and anticipation in one. He smoothed his palm down Quatre's flank. He could have slipped the same hand between Quatre's legs and Quatre would have let him. He knew without knowing how he knew. His body knew.  
  
He drew a deep breath, though it didn’t really clear his head. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to. "You should go," he answered belatedly. "I can call someone for you. You can pretend it was just a bad drunk now, I don't think anyone would be any the wiser."  
  
He had a sudden vivid flash of the balcony, the night before. Quatre's head rearing back in moonlight. Bleached white against the dark leather of the couch cushions.  
  
"I'm not sure that explanation would relieve anyone." A little crease appeared between Quatre's golden eyebrows, compressed his lips together. "I-- I don't-- Does it always feel like this after? I want-- I want--"

“I'm not doing that to you again.”

The hand curving to his crotch stilled. “Oh,” Quatre said, and eased away, only to find himself caught.

Zechs hadn't consciously done it. He had the left wrist in his grip, now, the scarred wrist. He rubbed the scar with his thumb. “You didn't mean...”

“I thought it might be better sober.”

Too close not to feel awkward turning him down. Too cognizant that he had taken what he wanted, the night before, without precisely asking first. Why reject it now when offered?  
  
Because he didn't know why it was. Being offered. Being asked.  
  
Another graphic memory. The crimson cashmere scarf. Slithering snake-like to the carpet, silk against skin, burning, dragging. Crushed between them as they grappled, tore at each other, fucked like wild men. Like animals.  
  
Not his memory. _Not yet,_ he snarled at ZERO. _Not yet. My time. My time._  
  
"Zechs."  
  
Staring at him. Frightened? Wide-eyed. Not scared, no. Cautious. Waiting on him. That was the warrior, that was the soldier, who knew an attack was imminent and still waited, watching the signs, ready to spring away.  
  
The irises locked on his transformed like the ocean in sunlight. From blue to emerald green, as he did what ZERO showed him, and pulled that captured hand back to his groin. He pressed it flat over the ridge of his prick, directed it in a slow down, up, down caress. Released it to return the favour. Quatre was hard. Breath quickened between them both. Quatre didn't stop him with even so much as a flicker of an eyelid.  
  
They arranged themselves in deadly quiet. Quatre slid beneath him as Zechs raised up on his knees to unbutton his trousers. The five buttons of the fall-front flap seemed each to take a year. He pushed and pulled himself clear of them leg by leg, careful, his ankles tangling with Quatre's, the weight of his body on his wrist planted against the cushions a thing of strange mystery. He must have done this before, but of that there was no remembrance, of course; maybe it was new. Maybe it was as important as it felt, and it did, it felt oddly important, like a thunderstorm on the horizon banked but creeping nearer. He lowered himself slowly, his knees between Quatre's, their calves slipping against each other, their ribcages compressing together deliciously. He put his arm behind Quatre's neck and lifted his face up. He lowered his lips to the bony protrusion of Quatre's collarbones, his tongue tasting salt as he sucked on them. Even if the dawn had been able to penetrate his heavy curtains, it wouldn't have reached them in the dark hole they were slowly sinking into.  
  
He travelled over Quatre's chest until he found a nipple, pink and hard. It rolled beneath his mouth, held firm between his teeth. Hard. Quatre was hard. He was hard, too. His body knew what it wanted, and it supplied the imagery, now, not ZERO, splaying Quatre under him, over him, and his body ached all over but with a ferocious focus, a need to drive into something, to fold into something that could take all of him. He was trembling.  
  
"How do you want it?" he rasped.  
  
A finger light as a feather traced a line down his spine. "On my stomach,” Quatre said. His eyes were slits of concentration hiding the colour from sight. “Do whatever you like."  
  
“Whatever I like?” It hit him like a slap to the face. The accusation and the memory both. He knew what he'd done last night, he knew why Quatre knew, too, knew those fantasies in his head were shameful reality.

Quatre freed his other hand to brush the backs of his fingers down Zechs’s cheek. "I was stabbed in the war,” he said easily, softly. “It's easier on my back."  
  
It was spoken like truth, but he couldn’t tell if it was. He couldn’t quite believe it, anyway. He wondered how many times Quatre had asked to be fucked face-down, and who had complied.  
  
It wouldn’t be him. He answered by sliding arms around the other man and hauling them both upright, Quatre forced to straddle his lap as Zechs put his back to the cushions. "How about like this?" he asked, capturing a handful of long strands of wheat-coloured hair at the nape of Quatre’s neck, scratching lightly at the skin beneath. Quatre shivered against him. Their mouths were only an inch apart, and that close all he had was the impression of that sweet smile, the one that could forgive all evil. And the gentle fingers that found his face again, rubbing a line through Zechs’s stubble, a scrape along his jaw and chin that made him shiver in return.  
  
"I have lube. Somewhere," he managed roughly. He was dizzy. Not just the sex. Blood pressure. Hangover. Alone, he would already have been high again. Alone, he never would have gone this long without it. And if he was suffering it, Quatre must have been-- "Do you... do you need to be high for this?"  
  
But Quatre shook his head, and ran his fingers down Zechs’s hair, causing little pringles along his scalp. "I don't want to be high,” he said. “I'm afraid I'd forget it."  
  
He already had. Had he? Something to fight. "Yeah. Okay."  
  
The smile was patient this time. Tender. "You want to warm up first? Or go find the lube?"  
  
He shook his head as fingers found a sensitive spot just above his ear, tugging lightly at the hair growing there. "Unless you mind spit."  
  
“I don’t mind.” A kiss pressed against the side of his mouth, a little exhale hot against his cheek. Then there were fingers between them, disappearing between Quatre’s lips, his cheeks going hollow as he sucked them. They emerged a few moments later wet. Zechs was pushed back against the cushions as Quatre rose onto his knees. Quatre hissed before he caught himself; his eyes tightened in what might have been pain.  
  
He still didn't say stop.  
  
"Don't," Zechs whispered. He curled his fingers about Quatre’s hips, stroking back to find the three fingers knuckle-deep in flesh. He traced the ridge of violated muscle around them, shuddering and turning his face into Quatre’s chest. “I'll do that." He opened his mouth wide, pressing the length of his tongue along Quatre’s sternum. A kiss touched the top of his head, and something hot and leaking bumped his stomach when he added his finger to the three in that slick tunnel.  
  
Quatre braced himself more fully against the couch as Zechs spat into his hand several times, preparing them both. He slid his hand between Quatre’s legs rather than reaching around, to caress the heavy sac draping from the curved erection. The taught, tight buttocks spread for his fingers, and he traced up the crease until he was touching the small of Quatre’s back. He dragged their skin together as he moved back down, drawing a circle about the puckered hole hiding in the center.  
  
Quatre murmured against his hair as he penetrated him again. He was already moist and a little loose, but Zechs was careful, pressing his saliva deep and scissoring his fingers to widen the entrance. He kissed the nipples hovering by his mouth as he did, bit down on one, and won a moan. When he’d managed four fingers, he stopped playing, and grasped Quatre’s hips in one hand, digging tight with his fingers. Arms locked on either side of Zechs’s head, Quatre nodded at him; Zechs held his own cock in place with one fist, and guided Quatre down with the other. They both gasped when Quatre slid down easily, taking the head quickly past the ring of muscle. Quatre’s thighs began to tremble just as he was completely seated, and he pressed his forehead to Zechs’s neck, grabbing him about shoulders as he sat hard.  
  
Their eyes locked, Zechs’s wide, Quatre’s almost shut, struggling to stay open. The flush on his face and neck was spreading down, blooming hot and beautiful on his stomach and thighs, staining the whole of his cock rosy. Zechs admired it distantly while he learned the feel of that blushing body around him, clenching him tight and drawing him deep.  
  
"You feel good," he said hoarsely. He gathered his strength for a rough upward thrust, pushing down with his legs and back with his shoulders so that his backside left the couch and Quatre scrambled to balance himself. He grasped that bouncing dick between them, thumb against the long vein and sensitive ridge below the head as he squeezed.  
  
Quatre let his head fall back, just like the night before at the railing, baring his throat. "You too," he groaned. He tossed his head as Zechs rolled his hips, and a bead of sweat dripped from his temple down his jaw. Then he suddenly fell forward, his mouth open and panting as his forehead met Zechs’s and stayed there.  
  
It was too much.  
  
Silence grew between them, but not quiet. His living room was full of sounds like the wet suction of him moving in and out of Quatre. Their breathing, not in time, Quatre’s lighter than his and quicker, his own deep and ragged. The silky rasp of their skin meeting and rubbing. The creak of the couch springs, the stick of perspiring bodies on the leather cushions.  
  
Quatre’s eyes, always returning to his. There was desperation there, and it wasn’t from the sex.  
  
He pulled out of Quatre with a dry pop, and bent the man’s supple body over the plump arm of the couch. Immediately Quatre pulled his knees under him, lifting his backside high in the air as he reached low, hooking his hand under the frame of the couch and holding so tightly the muscles in his arm jumped. Zechs knelt on one knee behind him, the other foot flat on the floor for leverage, and spat again, this time directly at the reddened hole that waited for him. He pushed back home, much deeper in this new position. Quatre gasped loudly, his body rocked with the force of it, his bottom and the backs of his thighs slapping against Zechs.  
  
With a hitched little laugh, Quatre said, "It really is better for my back."  
  
_Fuck him,_ it murmured. The accusing whisper curled about his mind, clogging his lungs. _He’s using you. You might as well reciprocate._  
  
But what could he want from me, Zechs argued. Their thighs met with the force of his thrust, and Quatre rocked against the couch.  
  
_How many times have you been on the bottom wishing you could make someone hurt like you do?_  
  
Zechs discovered he was shaking. His mouth was dry, his gut tight. "Okay, yeah," he heard himself saying. He fought for the coherence to apologise, to admit, "I'm not going to last."  
  
“It's all right, Zechs.”  
  
He climaxed abruptly, hard, mindlessly forcing himself deep as he bent over Quatre, crushing the smaller man against the arm of the couch. The smooth inner walls of Quatre’s ass clenched obligingly, rhythmically, bringing him out of the darkness with that regular beat. He found himself breathing hard and humid into the knobs of Quatre’s spine, his cheek pressed against the ridge of a shoulder blade and the pounding heart beneath it. His right hand, crammed beneath Quatre’s belly, was wet.  
  
Rather shakily, but with ingrained politeness, Quatre said, “Thank you.”  
  
His throat was dry. "I promised you coffee.” He pulled away slowly. They both gasped a bit as he pulled free of Quatre’s body, followed by a sluggish dribble of his own semen. "I'll get you a towel," he added, embarrassed by that, by himself. He stepped back, and this time it was him who avoided the questioning eyes that turned up to his. The corridor took him to the half-bath and its linen closet. He paused long enough to clean himself, wincing at the rough swipe of the washcloth against his sensitive groin. He found a large towel for Quatre, and returned to the living room with it. Quatre had barely moved, only shifting to curl his legs beneath him. I did that, Zechs thought.  
  
He draped the towel about Quatre’s waist. "Or would you rather tea?"  
  
"That's fine."  
  
He nodded quickly and turned to the kitchen, this time, pausing only to scoop his trousers from the floor as he passed them. Once through the archway into the kitchen, he dressed quickly, buttoning away the evidence of what they’d just done. His maid had reorganised the cupboard that held his tea things, but he found a sachet of darjeeling hidden in the ceramic Ching Dynasty canister that had been a gift from Relena. He left it sitting on the counter as he filled the kettle and set it on a burner to boil.  
  
He heard soft footsteps, accompanied by a sense of presence. Quatre came to the counter beside him, putting his back to it. He wore the towel wrapped about his waist. His chest was dappled with the dregs of that marvellous flush, like sunburn or rash. Neither of them spoke as Zechs rescued the water just before boiling, pouring into a mug and dropping the sachet in after it. When the tea had steeped enough to earn its name, he removed the bag, dropping it into the sink, and transferred the mug to the glass table that sat in the centre of his kitchen.  
  
And then he turned and embraced Quatre, fitting the smaller frame against his chest and bowing his head to rest on Quatre’s shoulder. Quatre held him tightly in return, stroking in long soothing journeys up his back, down again.  
  
"You did just fine, Zechs,” he murmured, “all the way through."  
  
"And what does that mean?" he asked bleakly.  
  
"It means you didn't hurt me. Even when I asked."  
  
"Should I start hiding the knives?"  
  
With a little smile that had an edge of self-deprecation, Quatre replied, "Only the dull ones." Zechs felt a gentle pat on the small of his back, and then Quatre pulled away, sliding into one of the chairs and reaching for his tea. Zechs watched him blow on the surface, cradle the mug between both palms.  
  
"I'd rather you didn't,” he said abruptly, startling even himself. Then, oddly, he felt the need to explain. Awkwardly, flatly, he added, "We're alike."  
  
Quatre didn't answer. He sipped the tea, a tiny little sip, and then again. The shadows under his eyes were dark, Zechs noticed. He looked haggard, beneath the glister of sex. There was a lingering tension in his shoulders, and he sat as if he were in pain.  
  
Zechs stepped up to the table, and slid his fingers into Quatre’s hair. "You should eat,” he said. “The hangover will go away faster if you do." He dredged up a smile of his own when Quatre turned into his caress, the tea caught still between his palms and his eyes closed. "You're too tired to go," he added.  
  
"They'll wonder where I am. I'm sure they're upset already."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"My jailors." Quatre said it lightly, but it made Zechs pause.  
  
"Who would they be?" he asked cautiously.  
  
"There were three at the party last night. One borrowed from your sister's security. And there will be more when I go home." Quatre opened his eyes and looked gravely up at Zechs. "I destroyed a colony," he said. As if it weren’t connected; but Zechs knew it was.  
  
"Call them,” he answered. “Or I can. Or better yet, I'll call Relena and tell her I'm keeping you."  
  
He got a curve of the pale lips for that, and a moment later, an indulgent nod. Zechs didn’t bother to explain that he’d been serious. Instead, he left the table for the telephone perched on the wall opposite them. It had only one number pre-programmed, and he set it dialing on speaker. He leant against the wall while it rang.  
  
“ _This is Relena,”_ his sister began. Zechs cut her off quickly.  
  
“It’s Zechs. I have Quatre Winner at my place, so call off your dogs." He didn’t wait for a reply, either, punching the button to hang up on her startled inhale. He turned back to Quatre, and found the young man grinning into his tea.  
  
"What?" he said.  
  
"That might be taking the not-talking-to-your-sister a little far," Quatre chided.  
  
"She's a bitch."  
  
To his surprise, the grin faded at that. "No, she's not."  
  
He shrugged. "No?" But though he waited, nothing else was forthcoming, and he let it pass for a later time. "Do you sleep better in a bed?" he asked.  
  
“It's relative."  
  
"Well, you're going to sleep."  
  
"Are you coming?"  
  
"Do you want me to?" he countered.  
  
Quatre stood, crossing in a silent barefoot stride to the sink, carefully placing the mug in the bottom. Then he came to Zechs, and halted a step away from him, and lay his hand on Zechs’s bare chest, skin to skin.  
  
"Yes," he said simply.  
  
He was pleased, on some level. A little scared on another, but the pleasure won out. "I'll come then,” he murmured. “In a minute. Okay? Go on ahead."  
  
He needed to fix. The need made him ashamed, an oddly acute shame in front of this man who had elicited in him a feeling of... of kindred. But ZERO was a constant drone now, and he wanted to silence it, to live in the moment without performing for ZERO’s twisted amusement. And looking at Quatre, he knew as well that he’d been transparent; but the shame wasn’t bigger than the need.  
  
In the end, Quatre only nodded. "Where is it?"  
  
"Down the hall, first door on the right."  
  
He nodded again, and dropped his hand from Zechs’s chest. At the edge of the kitchen, however, he looked back, and there was something subdued in his face that made Zechs’s chest feel tight where that warm hand had been a moment before.  
  
"We're not alike, really," Quatre said. "I may enjoy my suffering-- but I have no interest in losing the war."  
  
He swallowed. “And you think I do?"  
  
The green eyes were saying something direct, something sad. He didn’t know what it was, though.  
  
"I'll be in bed when you're done," Quatre said, and left him alone.

 


	2. Two

He swayed a bit as he stood. The needle he’d just used, and the one he had shared with Quatre the night before, went into the garbage. He wiped his spoon clean with a rag from the kitchen, and replaced it in his pouch with the tourniquet. He stood for a while then in silence, looking down at the smudges of dried white jizz streaking his leather couch cushions, trying to comprehend how they’d got there. Not quite making it, either.  
  
All of three people besides himself had been in the townhouse since he’d bought it after his release from prison. The decorator. The maid. His sister. And now there was a young man in his bed, and Zechs had invited him there– hadn’t he? Or maybe it was Quatre who’d invited himself. Zechs couldn’t quite remember. Surely there’d been a moment on that balcony of Bolsover Castle, a moment where he’d made the decision, taken the lead.  
  
Zechs left the stains where they were, and walked down the hallway to his bedroom. They were well into morning, but his house was always dim, the windows a blue glass that altered the quality of sunlight and rendered everything a little hazy. The bedroom had no windows at all, a specification which had greatly appealed to him, for all that he spent little enough time in there. In fact he couldn’t easily remember when he’d last been in his own bed; he slept on the couch when he slept at all. It was something of a surprise to see the room and realise it didn’t look the way he’d recalled it looking. Its darkness was only slightly alleviated by the untreated beechwood walls and ceiling beams griding the narrow interior. The bed was a massive affair of burgundy sheets and a thick duvet of metallic bronze. The desk in the corner held more pictures he had never bothered to examine, and there was a lamp he couldn’t remember having ever seen before, set on a dim orange glow. And there was Quatre, his pale skin looking lily-white in all that dark, rich colour, his tousled hair a gleaming flax against the bevy of overstuffed pillows he lay amidst like some sort of– soldier’s catamite.  
  
Zechs stood staring at him for a long minute, before he found the presence of mind to move. He shed his trousers, dropping them carelessly to the tiles. He lifted the edge of the duvet, tugging at the crisp sheets until he could slide under them. He lay back and propped his arms behind his head. There was a distance of nearly two feet between himself and Quatre, who lay on his stomach with a pillow tucked beneath his chest. Quatre’s eyes opened, and met Zechs’s.  
  
He said, "I used your toothbrush."  
  
"No problem," Zechs answered tightly.  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
He admitted silently that he would need a new toothbrush, but suddenly there didn’t seem to be a point in all the tension. "I'm fine," he said. He slumped a little more into the soft mattress, and cracked a small, snide smile. "Feeling no pain."  
  
Quatre’s hand emerged from under the pillow at his chest and moved to Zechs’s arm. Gentle fingers stroked the forearm to the elbow. It took a moment to understand the gesture, and when he did, Zechs felt a little– ashamed of himself.  
  
"I did it in the other arm, this time," he murmured. He caught Quatre’s hand, tracing around the edges of each finger with the tip of his own. Then he brought it to his mouth, and pressed a kiss to the palm. "This is who I am now."  
  
"Who will you be in another ten years, I wonder," the young man mused.  
  
He exhaled sharply through his nose. "I hope I'm dead."  
  
Dim eyes turned up to his again. "Then I'll have no-one to talk to, I suppose."  
  
That made him pause. He tried to sound casual, and failed dismally by his own judgement. "Oh, you're staying?"  
  
"Not if you're dead," was the immediate reply.  
  
Zechs had no answer for that, though on some level it struck him as funny. He rolled onto his side, closing some of that gulf of space between them, and rubbed a thumb down the curve of Quatre’s cheek. He followed the touch with a kiss. Quatre’s response was not un-enthusiastic, lips that tasted minty nipping lightly at his, but it was Quatre who pulled back first, his eyes downcast and his tongue licking away traces of Zechs’s saliva. Zechs let him go, finding himself a little pressed for air, for space, for privacy and silence and darkness. His head felt swollen, his eyes out of focus. He wanted to have sex again, but it had been so strangely cataclysmic the last time. The jut of Quatre’s shoulder blades in his back made him itch.  
  
They’d been silent for some time when Quatre spoke, and his soft voice pulled Zechs into the present with a painful jolt. He had to struggle to reconstruct a sentence he’d already missed most of: “How did you survive Libra's destruction? I always wondered."  
  
It had been the closest he’d ever come to dying, for all the times he’d sought so hard to accomplish it. The massive explosion wrought by his own beam saber and Heero Yuy’s canon had caught Epyon even as Wing had sped to freedom through a hull breach. Zechs had all but clawed through the wreckage, finally carving an escape with his malfunctioning thermal weapons. Epyon had been blind and without life support by then. Zechs had planned to die in that battle; but fear had gripped him, and a sudden desperate desire to live, and he had forced open his hatch and flung himself into Space as Epyon self-destructed about him.  
  
He cleared his throat to answer. "It wasn't terribly heroic, I'm afraid,” he said. “Epyon was disabled, so I stole another suit. The pilot was as good as dead anyway." He didn’t know anymore how true that was, or if it was only something he’d repeated so many times it took on a sheen of truth. He’d thrown a dying man out of a working suit so that he himself could live. At the end of the day, it didn’t say anything good about his character; but that wasn’t what plagued him, when he thought of that battle. Mostly, now, he simply wished he’d let Epyon take him to a frozen grave.  
  
A moment later, Quatre said, "You know my father died."  
  
The change of topic disappointed him. Quatre was a comfortable sort of confessor, and the telling of each shameful secret brought its own mercy. "I think I remember reading that, yes,” he answered belatedly. “I'm sorry." When silence lingered, Zechs wondered if he ought to say more. Before he could think of anything adequate, however, Quatre said, "I'm not."  
  
"I don't understand that," he answered slowly.  
  
"I don't either. But I'm not." Quatre closed his eyes, and dropped his cheek back to the pillow.  
  
"Does it bother you?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
For all the response had come without hesitation, Zechs still wondered if his questions were unwelcome. Or if it was only the silence Quatre was trying to stave away, and the things that would fill that quiet, if Zechs didn’t. He asked, "What do you do about it?"  
  
Quatre laughed softly. "I pretend."  
  
"Pretend what?" he pressed.  
  
"That he was a good father. That I was a good son."  
  
That response seemed grossly out of character, and Zechs found he felt betrayed by it. "How does that help anything?" he demanded bitterly.  
  
Green eyes opened, and Zechs registered genuine surprise in them. "Is it supposed to help?"  
  
Zechs stared. "Why would you play head games with yourself if it didn't?"  
  
He watched a little grin form on Quatre’s mouth. "I guess it sounds crazy, when you put it like that."  
  
"You're a little unbalanced," Zechs told him warily.  
  
"I thought that was the entire basis of our relationship this last twelve hours?" He paused. "You can't catch it from a needle," he added. Whatever he saw in Zechs’s face, he didn’t seem to like it. He looked away, and clung a little tighter to his pillow. Hunched in on himself, he murmured, "I don't have to talk. If you'd rather I be quiet."  
  
“No.” He brushed the edge of the pillow, warm from Quatre’s body, stirring the pale hairs on Quatre’s forearm. An unfamiliar emotion was filling him. He had never been a comfortable man, never at ease with himself, much less others. But though being with Quatre was surprising, and sometimes impossible to understand, it wasn’t– uncomfortable. As strange as it was, the moment where he thought Quatre might decide to leave, he realised he could want someone to stay.  
  
"Yours is the first voice I could tolerate in years, Quatre," he said.  
  
Quatre relaxed infinitesimally, but Zechs saw it, and knew it had been the right thing to say. "You say that very seriously,” Quatre murmured. “I always thought it was strange how quickly White Fang agreed to follow you. How loyal men of OZ were to you. But when you look at me like that, and you speak with that tone, I think I can understand it."  
  
"They were following my face,” Zechs protested, grimacing. “Not me. There's nothing at all admirable in my character."  
  
Quatre propped his chin onto the pillow, something causing a frown line between his wheat-coloured brows. "I didn't think you liked me," he murmured.  
  
“I didn't like myself.” No, and that hadn't changed in the last twelve hours, and no number of hours was likely to alter his feelings in that regard. “I like you,” he said. “It's, uh... It's not something I've had much occasion in my life to express. Liking. Caring. I've found it difficult, historically, to...”

“Express. You don't have to. Express it, or feel it. For me, I mean. You don't hardly know me.”  
  
"No,” Zechs conceded, “we don't know each other at all." He slid his fingers through Quatre’s soft hair, pulling the fringe away from his face and holding it there, the better to study the young face regarding him calmly. "You were like me,” he added. “Then. The shining star with the secrets hidden on the dark side." With a little caress, he let go of the strands he held. "If we're not alike now, it's me, not you. You're the same."  
  
"You don't know how many people would disagree with you."  
  
“Because they're stupid and unobservant," Zechs countered.  
  
"TIME ran an article on me last Christmas. They called me 'vapid.'" He put on an appropriately insipid look, and rolled his eyes. Zechs chuckled.  
  
"I read that," he said.  
  
"I have it pinned up in my bedroom."  
  
"They write more vicious things about me." He laughed again. "I like it."  
  
"I'm sure you do."  
  
"They can say what they want. It doesn't make it true, but it's hilarious when they stumble onto the mark all accidentally."  
  
Quatre moved his pillow closer, and followed it until they were sharing body heat with only a corner of cotton sheet between them. "They say you were Treize's lover while you were in OZ." He hesitated. "Actually, they say you were open for business, but that was the only part I ever believed."  
  
"Treize fucked anything that moved, or nearly. I'd only ever been with him before--” He didn't finish that sentence, didn't let the thought complete itself. “That didn't make us lovers."  
  
To Quatre’s credit, his expression barely wavered at Zech’s flat declaration. But he did grow solemn, and his eyes seemed more blue than green in the dim light. He said, "I'm sorry."  
  
“Are you?” Zechs snorted. “If you've read that much about us, then you know the rest of it. Alliance was a grotesquerie decades before either of us were born. The Academies were full of abusers and paedophiles. Treize was thirteen when he sucked off a dean old enough to be his grandfather. I wasn't much older when the drill instructor picked his favourites for 'private lessons'. What's the difference between too young to fuck and too young to kill? Because I was already a soldier then. Wasn't I?" He raised his eyebrows, but Quatre didn’t demur. "You weren't much older,” he recalled, “and a hell of a lot less well trained."  
  
"I flew my first mobile suit when I was thirteen," Quatre admitted. He was silent for a moment, and Zechs waited, curious about his thoughts. "I killed men that day,” Quatre murmured finally. “Soldiers. I never knew who they were. I used to dream about them, but they had no faces."  
  
"Mine used to have faces."  
  
"Do you think that makes it worse, or better?"  
  
Zechs shook his hair back over his shoulder. "I don't think it makes a difference. They're still ghosts. We're still accountable."  
  
"You like that word,” Quatre observed, and Zechs wasn’t sure if it was his imagination that painted a little censure into his tone. “Accountable. You're not accountable for ZERO, only what you did by your own hand. Of your own will."

“That's damning enough.”

“Yes.” Quatre wetted his lips, then abruptly put his back to Zechs. He moved restlessly, as if he couldn't settle, couldn't still himself. Zechs could see for himself a scar, puckered and white, that stab wound Quatre had mentioned before. It lay alongside his spine, alongside muscles spasming, and when Zechs placed gentle hands there, he felt them writhing. Quatre shuddered as he dug his thumbs into the tender iliocostals, and Quatre sucked in a breath of pain, rigidly controlled. A night on the couch-- a night on the couch and everything they'd done on that couch had done him no favours.  
  
“Forgive me,” Zechs said.  
  
“Why did you take me home from the party?” Quatre whispered. He pulled away from Zechs’s massage, planting his back to the headboard. “Is that why, what happened at your Academy? I’m short and I look like a little boy and maybe there's some fascination in that, some revenge, or it's all you know to...”

“No. I don't sleep with boys. You're not a boy, and you don't look like one.” He sat up himself, frustration driving him upright. “Everything said til now and that's what you can think of me? I don't mind condemnation for the things I've actually done, but that's absurd. I took you home because you asked me to, don't forget that, Winner-- you're the one who wanted it. All I did was give it to you.”

Not all you did, said his conscience. Whatever scraps of it were left. ZERO didn't need to give it voice. No, he didn't sleep with boys. But he'd taken more than was asked for, and Quatre wasn't wrong to accuse him of that.  
  
They stared at each other. And in that distant murmur ZERO could manage, even when Zechs was high, he heard the answer. He was no better than Treize; fascinated by the twisted, the broken. Everything that Quatre was, in all his youthful vulnerability.  
  
Quatre let out an uneven breath, and ran a hand over his face, back into his hair. "I'm sorry,” he managed, almost politely. “I don't feel very well."  
  
He finally found his voice. "You're hung over," he said. He hesitated, then left the bed. He shrugged on a robe, and went down the hall to the kitchen. There he filled a tumbler with water from the sink, and searched the pantry until he found what he was looking for– a bottle of acetaminophen tablets. He brought both items back to the bedroom, and found Quatre sitting with his knees to his chest, gazing down at his shaking hands.  
  
"Don't ask me to shoot you up again," Zechs warned him. He held out the water.  
  
Quatre found a smile from somewhere, but it was weak. "What's the pill?"  
  
"Generic. From the chemist. I only have one left." He shook the bottle as evidence, eliciting the lonely rattle of a single tablet, and popped the cap. He dropped the pill onto Quatre’s palm, and watched him slip it onto his tongue and drink it down.  
  
When he’d finished the water, Quatre asked, "You don't get hung over if you-- do it again?"  
  
Zechs shook his head. "You always get hung over."  
  
Quatre sighed, and cradled the glass between his sheet-draped knees. "Cold triumph, that.” He smeared a hand across his eyes, and it came away wet. “How long does it take to... how long does it leave you alone? Does it go away longer if you take more?”

He had the unhappy feeling that he was seeing what had been only hidden below the surface all night, since they’d first spoken on the balcony. The frightening thought that he was watching the inevitable, that Quatre would unravel and fall broken at his feet. The thrill he’d felt last night at the thought of destroying Quatre was now a feeling of almost physical nausea, and an urgent need to stop it from happening. "Quatre," he said.  
  
The wide eyes were pleading with him, but Quatre was far too stubborn to give it voice. He glanced away from Zechs, and said hoarsely, "I can control this."  
  
"Look at me and let me help you," he commanded.  
  
"I'm looking!"  
  
"You don't hear it,” Zechs told him in his most implacable voice. “You hear me. You're here. ZERO has nothing for you." He gripped Quatre by the chin and turned his head back until their eyes met again. “Say it and ZERO has no power."  
  
Quatre laughed uncertainly. "Name it to banish it?"

Zechs answered with a crooked smile. "Something like that," he agreed. He reached for Quatre’s hand as the stormy eyes roved away from him, skipping about the room, unable to settle. He tried to lend his strength for the struggle, or at least his understanding.  
  
"It's all I have, Zechs," Quatre whispered at last.  
  
"No,” he denied flatly. “You're wrong."  
  
"I've known you for all of a night. It's a drop in the ocean. Less than that."  
  
"And ZERO is your most steadfast friend,” he retorted sarcastically. “I get it." Quatre flinched, and Zechs sighed. He cupped the young man’s cheek, smoother, softer than his own even at nineteen. "Don't hide from me,” he added gently. “I live where you live, remember?"  
  
It was, finally, the right thing to say. "You do, don't you," Quatre mumbled. He smiled, but it was faint, almost automatic. "Population of two."  
  
"Three if you count ZERO."  
  
That won a tremulous chuckle. "Do you suppose it's blond too?"  
  
The danger seemed to be past. Under his gaze Quatre was pulling back together, rallying his strength. Zechs sat cautiously on the edge of the mattress, and squeezed Quatre’s hand as comfortingly as he could. "Ginger, probably," he said jokingly.  
  
The palm he held was damp and hot. "You really hate him,” Quatre said. He looked almost unbearably young, and Zechs could still feel the impression of that hairless cheek.  
  
He said, "He created me."  
  
And then, perversely, their roles were reversed, and Quatre was the one holding his hand, trying to comfort him. "You existed before he found you,” Quatre told him fiercely. “Maybe he moulded you. But he didn't create you. Even he isn't that powerful."  
  
"He's immortal, didn't you hear? Unkillable."  
  
"So's Heero Yuy. So are you, for that matter. It's going around."  
  
"Treize is no longer a factor in my life," he said. A bold statement of patent untruth that didn’t even impress himself. He didn’t give Quatre an opening to say anything else that would require him to examine a part of his life that he hated. He switched tracks, and went on the offencive. "Why were you at his party?" he asked.  
  
Quatre blinked, then lowered his head to his knees. "I was invited. My sisters thought I could be trusted to comport myself in public."  
  
Again. That was yet another time Quatre had referred to his family like that, with that undertone of bitterness and self-loathing. Was it paranoia? Drama? Or was it genuine? He hadn’t really believed it in the kitchen, when he’d offered to call his sister. But what if it were real? Who was behind it, and why? Was it because of Quatre's attempted suicide? The scars were well-healed and probably years old. And no-one had stopped them leaving the party.  
  
In the end, perhaps the easiest way to discover the truth would be to invite it in. "Do you need to call someone?" Zechs asked Quatre.  
  
"I should hire you. I like what you said to Relena."  
  
"Okay." He walked to the desk, picked up the phone, and brought it back to the bed trailing the cable. He presented the base to Quatre, and set the receiver between his shoulder and ear. "Dial it," he encouraged.  
  
Quatre laughed, clearly not taking him seriously. Or trying to laugh off a bluff that had been called? Zechs removed the received from his ear and bounced it lightly on his palm.  
  
"How tight a leash are they keeping you on?" he demanded.  
  
Quatre hesitated, and for a moment Zechs was certain he’d caught Quatre in a lie. But then his shoulders slumped, and he stared bleakly at the phone he held, tracing the number pad with a single finger. Zechs had to strain to hear his voice. "That was... I haven't left my home in... in four months." He pressed down on the ‘mute’ button. "Four months."  
  
The anger started somewhere near the pit of his stomach. By the time it made it to his head, Zechs had to unclench his jaw just to speak. "Dial it," he said.  
  
"They have good reasons."  
  
"Really."  
  
"Yes." He exhaled. "I should call. They'll be worried."  
  
"Do you want me to?" he offered again. "Or will that get you in more trouble?"  
  
"Only if they find out what we've been doing, I suppose." He turned a little smile up to Zechs, but it didn’t reach past his mouth, and it was short-lived. Zechs ignored it.  
  
"I'm not going to let them punish you for associating with me."  
  
"It wouldn't occur to them to blame you. I've demonstrated that I'm perfectly capable of embarrassing them on my own."  
  
"You're an adult, Quatre,” Zechs pointed out. “You're allowed to spend time with whoever you want."  
  
He looked up. "Can you give me a minute?"  
  
Zechs nodded, though he wondered what would be said that he wasn’t invited to hear. "Yes, of course," he murmured. He left promptly, and closed the door behind him until it was just before the latch. And then he went to the kitchen, and picked up the extension line.  
  
He listened to the ringtone as he leant against the counter. When the click announced that the other line had been answered, Zechs waited for the female voice of one of these overbearing sisters. The person who answered, however, was a man.  
  
“ _Hello? Quatre?”_  
  
Quatre was not at all surprised to be guessed at, though the number must have been unfamiliar. They'd been waiting on his call, which went some distance to confirming what Quatre was claiming. "It's me,” he said softly. “I'm safe."  
  
_"Your sisters are pissed. They know who you left with. They fired Raj and Jorge for letting you leave alone."_  
  
"They know where I am. None of the men were under orders to stop me leaving-- it wasn't their fault."  
  
_"No, it's all yours, as usual."_ The was a short pause. _"Are you all right?"_  
  
"Yes. I went voluntarily."  
  
Voluntarily. That word stung. It stung all the more that he was guilty of nearly everything that might be feared in Quatre coming home with him.  
  
“ _Should I worry?"_ the man asked.  
  
"I told you years ago you didn't have to worry about me," Quatre responded, somewhere between irritated and– fond. And the man replied in the same tone.  
  
_"Which would be fine, if you didn't keep proving yourself wrong,”_ he said. “ _Look, just give me a time frame. How much longer are you going to be there?"_  
  
Quatre didn’t immediately supply an answer. "I don't know,” he said finally. “I'll ring when I know."  
  
_"Khushrenada is telling everyone you've gone off to duel or something. He's highly amused."_  
  
"Shut up, Duo."  
  
Duo. Duo Maxwell, Pilot 02?  
  
This time the hesitation was a little hurt. _"So. Call me when you're ready to leave. I'll pick you up."_  
  
Zechs hung up with Quatre, barely registering the exchange of good-byes. He didn’t know what to make of the call. Or rather, he knew exactly what to make of it. ZERO was screaming far too loudly to be ignored.  
  
He was sitting on the couch in the den when Quatre emerged a few minutes later. The magazine he’d found with his mail in the hall was months out of date, but it was sufficient disguise. He was collected enough to ask, “What’d they say?” without shouting.  
  
"You heard."  
  
He looked up from the glossy pages. "Pardon?"  
  
Quatre crossed his arms, though his quizzical, mildly confrontational stance was made somewhat ridiculous by the fact that he was still nude. "I didn't need ZERO to tell me you'd listen," he said.  
  
Zechs glanced back down to the advertisement detailing expensive exfoliators and hand lotions. The pictures registered only vaguely. "Then why'd you send me out?" he asked without looking up.  
  
"Habit, I guess. Shame. A general lack of interest in humiliation as a sexual kink."  
  
"You don't owe me anything." Zechs flipped a page without reading it.  
  
"The cost of a hit." Quatre came to the couch, reaching out to the back cushions and running a finger along the leather seam. "May I sit?"  
  
Zechs performed his own careless shrug, from the shoulders as he occupied his hands turning another page. “So is Duo Maxwell one of your jailors? And your sisters? They really did have people there watching you.”

“I suppose I wouldn't believe it, either, if someone told me without telling me the why.” Quatre eased onto the couch beside him, rubbing his knees slowly. Zechs watched Quatre’s chest rise and fall in shallow breaths, as that speckle-flush began to appear in splotches from his collar. Suddenly Quatre seemed aware of his nakedness, and his arms moved restlessly, settled low on his belly to hide his lap. At last his mouth opened, and he said softly, "Duo is the one who caught me talking to ZERO. Aloud, in those days. Before I knew it made me look crazy." He broke away from Zechs’s face to look at his hands. “Before I knew it made me look dangerous."  
  
Some of his anger evaporated at that wistful tone. But it didn’t alleviate the sense that he was being lied to, or deliberately kept in the dark, and he didn’t like it. Zechs determined then to get some concrete answers. He made his voice the hard voice of command, and said, "Is he your keeper, Quatre?"  
  
Quatre responded to his tone by going stiff. "He's my friend. He– he is my friend."  
  
He didn’t back down. "Hours ago you said they were your jailors. Which is it, Quatre?"  
  
Zechs saw the agitation on Quatre’s face before he turned away, dipping toward the ground to retrieve his undershorts and trousers. "I gave them reasons,” he said tightly. “I gave them a long list of reasons."  
  
The deliberate obfuscation was frustrating. "What reasons?" Zechs demanded. He left the couch, and made a grab for Quatre’s arm just as he stepped toward the front hall. He knew he’d squeezed too tightly when Quatre winced, and struck back, nearly breaking his hold with a well-placed blow to the crook of his elbow.  
  
"Don't manhandle me!" Quatre snapped.  
  
"Am I going to be another one of your jailors if I do?" he retorted. Immediately he regretted it. It had been too many years since he’d had to temper himself, and he knew he’d inflicted a wound. For all purposes, Quatre _was_ smaller and younger than him, more easily hurt.  
  
Why did Quatre feel anything for him? He had drugged Quatre, taken advantage of him, turned on him and accused him of lying. He should put Quatre out the door while they both still had a chance at pretending nothing had happened, and it could all be safely forgotten.  
  
Just as his hold loosened, Quatre’s head came up. He said, "I killed a man. Two years ago."  
  
Zechs swallowed to ease a dry throat. "Where?" he answered softly.  
  
"I-- " Quatre exhaled sharply and looked away. "Another party. He approached me. He was taunting me,” he explained haltingly. “He knew I'd flown a Gundam. I knew he was OZ. He had a gun. I broke his skull."  
  
"ZERO told you to?"  
  
"He never drew his weapon. ZERO told me it was there. Hidden under his jacket. It _was_ there. But no-one knew that when they found us."  
  
It did, Zechs had to admit, explain a great deal. And intuition furnished the rest. "They covered it up?” he guessed. “Your sisters and Maxwell?"  
  
Quatre nodded slightly. "They made a deal."  
  
"What was it?"  
  
"They watch me. The man's wife got a settlement."  
  
Zechs dropped his hand. It was obviously not the whole story, but he knew what the rest of it must be, what was unspoken, as shameful as his own secrets. Quatre had been an elite warrior, not that long out of combat, and already in the grip of an artificial intelligence that made no differentiation between those who could fight back and those who could not. An insult, a threat, and ZERO would have supplied the order– attack first. ZERO might even have been correct in that assessment, if there had been a gun. But Zechs could also imagine what it must have looked like, finding Quatre standing over a broken body. It must have looked like murder.  
  
"What is ZERO telling you about me?" he asked slowly.  
  
Quatre’s jaw worked. "Escape."  
  
"Elaborate."  
  
"That's all. Escape." He shook his head. His fingers played with the hem of his trousers, and he was shivering. There were already red impressions on his upper arm where Zechs had held him.  
  
"Is that what you're going to do then? Escape me?"  
  
He shook his head again, his eyes dark as they met Zechs’s. "I think– I thought– I was escaping _to_ you."  
  
He nodded. His throat felt so dry. "Are you going to stay?"  
  
"Do you still want me to?"  
  
"You're welcome here, yes."  
  
Quatre let out a breath in a little puff, and then sniffed; his hand twitched as if to wipe his nose, but habit stopped him. "Why?” he asked unevenly. “After all that."  
  
"Because we're alike. Because I like you.” He searched for something more, better, to say, but words had never been his strength. They abandoned him now as well. “I don't know,” he finished awkwardly. “Does it matter why?" He put a hand on Quatre’s shoulder, and stepped toward him. A moment later Quatre relaxed against him, and Zechs embraced him one-armed, holding him against his chest with the trousers stuck between them like an absurd shield of modesty.  
  
“Just don't lie to me,” he murmured, rubbing his other hand along Quatre’s back. “Okay?"  
  
"I won't," Quatre agreed softly, his breath warm on the silk of Zechs' robe. “I haven't. It's the most honest thing I've done in a long time, this-- whatever this is with you. Don't be angry with me, not for that.”  
  
"No. Never."  
  
He felt Quatre swallow. "Duo. We used to be together. We met during the war, when we thought Heero had died– when Colonel Une threatened to fire on a colony, and Heero self-destructed. Duo was his friend. We went into hiding together. He was the first– he was the first boy who’d ever really looked at me like that.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“I got sick. He broke it off. He said I– he said we had too many differences, that he didn’t want to be just Quatre Winner’s boyfriend, that he needed to do something more. It was after– after I killed that man."  
  
It made even less sense, then, that Quatre had rung Maxwell, wherever Maxwell was. Zechs tried to put that into words, tried to hold onto the point. "If he’s not your lover anymore,” he asked, “why him?"  
  
“I live with him. He stays in my house, so there’s someone around.”  
  
What? "So because he stays he's awarded the privilege of abusing you?" Zechs pressed.  
  
Quatre stepped away, and dropped onto the couch. He lay his head back, staring unblinking at the ceiling. "I destroyed a colony,” he said harshly. “Hundreds of noncombatants. I put ZERO in my Gundam. I brought it into being. I tried to kill Trowa-- I don't know if you knew that. But he would have forgiven all of that. He's not a bad person. He understands."  
  
Zechs said, "It's not my business," but in a way, it was. And he wanted the answer. He wanted to know what was going on, and he wanted to know why Quatre seemed to feel he deserved his prison. One death was regrettable, but it didn’t explain everything.  
  
"No,” Quatre sighed. “This is part of it, isn't it? The escape." He was quiet for a moment. "He rejected it. ZERO. I'll never understand how he could do that. How he could be so strong."  
  
Zechs sat on the cushion beside Quatre, the leather cool from the central air on his thighs and shoulders. "It's... not about strength."  
  
"What is it about?"  
  
"Desire." He swallowed, trying not to look at his desk and his pouch. "It's about what you want. And what you believe."  
  
"I wanted to let go,” Quatre murmured. “I wanted answers. And I believed..."  
  
"And now you can't stop." The shift of Quatre’s eyes was answer enough. “Someday we will."  
  
Quatre nodded. His hand moved, but he quashed it; then a moment later it moved again, and Zechs watched in surprise as Quatre wiped angrily at his face, digging his knuckles over his eyes. Zechs caught him, and held Quatre’s hand firmly, stunned to find the knuckles wet. "What is that?" he demanded.  
  
"What?"  
  
He brushed a streak of liquid away from a hot cheek with his thumb. "Why tears?" he clarified, confused and wondering.  
  
"I don't know. It's too much." He seemed embarrassed, but more tears followed, as his eyes reddened and he tried to hide it by looking away. One fat drip clung to the curve of his jaw, and Zechs stared at it.  
  
"You need sleep," he decided at last. It must have been the hang-over, and maybe his back was still hurting. He stood, and pulled Quatre to his feet as well. He was surprised again when Quatre’s hand tightened anxiously about his.  
  
"Will you come?” Quatre asked him tentatively. “Really?"  
  
He could only nod. "If you want."  
  
"I'd like it. I liked it last night, on the couch."  
  
Not the sex. Afterwards, when Zechs had slipped behind him, to hold him while he slept. "Then– I will," he said.  
  
Painfully green eyes turned up to his. "Zechs? What can I do for you?"  
  
He conjured a smile, and fought to keep it on his mouth and in his eyes. "You're here."

 

 

  
**

 

 

 

The doorbell rang at half four.  
  
Zechs had showered and dressed while Quatre slept like the dead, oblivious to the noise. He had finished the magazine, tried to interest himself in food, and spent far too much time in silence with only circling thoughts and unanswerable questions. The doorbell was a shock. The maid came only once a week and wasn’t due for three more days, and he simply did not get other visitors. He stopped in his bedroom closet first to pull a pressed cotton shirt with long sleeves from its hanger before going for the door. He shrugged it on, twitching the collar flat just at the buzzer rang again, the low tone grating on his headache. He was surprised to discover he had never locked the door after he’d brought Quatre in; he had been far too distracted, to have forgotten such a detail. Now feeling grim, he depressed the latch, and opened the door.  
  
Duo Maxwell was standing on his front steps.  
  
His first thought was anger that Duo had arrived unsummoned and without notice. His second was equally petty-- Duo, unlike Quatre, could really be said to have aged since the war. His face no longer had the childish roundness that Quatre’s had. He was somewhat taller than Quatre, though still several inches shorter than Zechs, and he was whippet-thin. He was also, whether by design or accident, dressed in nearly the same colour Quatre had been wearing at the party. His ivory button down was belted into pale slacks that were slightly darker. Zechs followed rangy legs down to scarlet trainers, and winced.  
  
"He's sleeping," he said.  
  
Maxwell blinked at him, then shoved his hands into his pockets. "Can I come in?"  
  
He kept his face impassive as he stepped aside, courteously opening the door wider to allow Maxwell to pass him. Maxwell made his entrance with a little sidestep and what looked suspiciously like a hunch designed to make him appear smaller; he glanced about incuriously, then turned back to face Zechs as the older man closed the door and leant against it.  
  
"I guess you met up at the party?" he asked.  
  
Zechs held up a hand. "Let's skip the games, shall we? I know you know every detail of what happened between that night and now."  
  
Only Maxwell's eyes were the same. Still that curious shade of violet, and narrowed in a dark temper that promised death and destruction should what he saw displease him. Zechs returned the look iota for iota, until Maxwell broke their stare and looked about the hallway. He fingered the blossom of a fake hyacinth on the table almost absently. "Is this the first time... you and him..."  
  
Zechs smirked at him.  
  
This time Maxwell visibly clenched his jaw. A moment later he said, not precisely requesting, “If I can just hang around until he wakes up."  
  
"It's driving you crazy, isn’t it?” Zechs murmured.  
  
"I'd think someone like you would be a little more sensitive with phrases like that."  
  
Oh, there was no friendship or compassion on offer here. Maxwell’s purple eyes were level and his gaze, though not overtly hostile, promised no compromise. "Someone like me?" Zechs repeated, mocked, brushing past Maxwell and walking into the den. He didn’t remember the state of the couch until he saw the cushions. He sat directly on top of the mess, the easiest way he could think of to hide it without first drawing attention to the existence of a problem. He tossed an arm over the back of the couch and crossed his ankles, inviting Maxwell to one of the chairs with a careless flip of his hand. "So,” he continued, “I'm crazy, and Quatre's crazy, too, and we can't be trusted together; so you came to fetch him back to where you can watch his every move. Is that it?"  
  
Duo sat on the jacquard suzette chair, a ginger procedure that seemed to make him uncomfortable. He stayed perched on the edge of the seat, at any rate, and kept his elbows on his thighs rather than trusting the arms of the chair. He wore a pursed-lip expression now that was appraising Zechs. "Is that what he told you?" he replied.  
  
"Leave Quatre out of it,” Zechs said pleasantly. “I think you should tell me what you think."  
  
"I think I'm here to give him a ride home. That's all."  
  
"I think you're early,” Zechs corrected. “He's staying."

Maxwell had even less practise than Winner at concealing his thoughts. Zechs could easily read the evaluation going on behind Maxwell’s eyes– how much to give in, how much to fight. Still trying to be casual, when he wanted to scream and yell. He didn’t have Quatre’s unique combination of polish and innocent appeal, but he gave off a stronger impression of boyishness, an image Zechs had no doubt was a careful construction. He remembered the first pictures of Pilot 02 to come across his desk– remembered thinking he had never seen a clearer image of Peter Pan brought to life, from the dangerously sly smile to the cocky hand planted on slender hip on the eve of his own execution. The inevitability of time was stealing some of that from Duo Maxwell, unlike his fictional twin. Maxwell looked like he was trying hard not to grow up. The red trainers planted on Zechs’s teardrop Dorokhsh rug were damning evidence in themselves.  
  
"Another night?” Maxwell asked finally. “I can bring some stuff for him."  
  
"Perhaps longer,” Zechs said. “What's your interest in this?"  
  
"I'm his friend. What's your interest?"  
  
"I'm his friend."

Maxwell glared at him. “Terrific," he said in a clipped, irritated little snip.  
  
“Start with this. I'd like to know why calling you makes him afraid."  
  
Maxwell blinked rapidly as he tried to hide his dismayed reaction. "Does it?"  
  
That looked real, Zechs thought. Did he take it for truth? "I think you know it does."  
  
Maxwell's mouth tightened as he recovered his slip. "Look, I get that you've just met him and all, but I don't warrant the third degree. I'm not here to piss on my territory."  
  
"Aren't you?" Zechs retorted.  
  
"You're doing enough for the both of us."  
  
"All right then." Zechs knocked one of the loose cushions over as he stood, letting it cover the stains while he went into the kitchen. He had brewed iced tea only two days ago, and he poured two glasses of the smoky lapsang souchon blend. The glasses were already perspiring as he brought them back to the den. He gave one to Maxwell, who accepted it while avoiding his fingers so deftly he almost didn’t notice, and resumed his seat. “If we're all such good friends,” he resumed, “then why don't you tell me why you keep him on such a tight leash?"  
  
"Leashes are for dogs, not people." Maxwell sipped, and made a little face at the bitter flavour. He rested the glass on his knee. "He called me."  
  
"I know." He didn’t add that he had pushed Quatre to do so, nor that they had argued about it after. "Why you? It's my understanding the two of you are no longer together."  
  
"Guess you did cover a broad range of topics in the past twenty-four." Maxwell drank again, cautiously, then drained a third of his glass. "We broke up. Yeah."  
  
"Then why does he call you instead of someone else, and why is he still afraid of you, and why, when you're speaking to him on the phone, do you act like a put-upon, cuckolded lover?"  
  
" _Excuse_ me?"  
  
"You heard me," Zechs said flatly.  
  
"And apparently you heard me."  
  
"Answer the questions, Maxwell."  
  
Maxwell leant forward and placed his tea carefully on the coffee table. As he straightened, he said, "You know, I don't think I will. I don't like the question– I don't like how you asked it– but most of all, I don't like you."  
  
Zechs smiled. "Oh, dear."  
  
"I came here perfectly willing to accept that they two of you were doing– whatever– and that's fine. That's jolly. I'm just the ride home."  
  
Zechs ignored that. "Are you his guardian?"  
  
"I'm his friend," Maxwell repeated stubbornly.  
  
"Does he have a guardian?"  
  
"His sister is his legal guardian until he hits twenty-one."  
  
"I find that interesting,” Zechs said. “Don't you? He's an adult by any standard. Why would he need a guardian at all?"  
  
"He's got a gigantic trust fund, that's why. You rich people don't like to let the cash slip away until it's legally unavoidable."  
  
Zechs took his first sip of his tea, watching Maxwell watch him over the rim of the glass. "That's not the impression I got from Quatre," he answered after he swallowed.  
  
"What answer would you like me to give you?” Maxwell returned. “The one that confirms what you already think, or my side of the truth– which isn't nearly as fun?"  
  
"You've already said you're not going to give me your side of the truth, haven't you?"  
  
Frankly Maxwell said, "I don't really see why I should."  
  
"Either you're very confused, or more possessive than you are willing to admit."  
  
They were glaring at each other now, tempers rising beneath the surface. Maxwell didn’t quite have his tone under control when he snapped, "Does it even cross your bleeding mind that you don't have all the facts?"  
  
"Yes, it does. And I've been asking you for them. You're so damned selfish you refuse to give them to me. What do you expect me to do?"  
  
"Back the fuck off!"  
  
"Why?" he demanded.  
  
"Because he's not up for whatever agenda you've got. In case you didn't notice that when you were tucking him into bed."  
  
"I don't have an agenda.” As soon as he’d said it, though, he realised how it could look as though he did. Quatre was wealthy, as Maxwell had hinted. So, of course, was Zechs, and Maxwell’s roving eye had no doubt observed quite a bit. But Quatre was also a Gundam Pilot, just like 02. He supposed the strange thing was not that Maxwell should question his intentions, but rather that Quatre hadn’t. They had been enemies and more than enemies; the Pilots had sided with Treize sheerly to bring Zechs to defeat. And there had been a moment– more than one, if he was honest– since Quatre had walked onto his balcony, in which Zechs had had a fleeting thought of finally conquering one of them, the zealous child-killers from Space. But he didn’t feel that anymore, somehow.  
  
Maxwell set his jaw. "That has yet to be seen."  
  
His headache was worsening, a thrumming pain in his sinuses. He rubbed the bridge of his nose firmly, but the relief faded as soon as he removed the pressure. "Why don't you tell me what you think I want from him?"  
  
"I think you've already had part of it,” Maxwell said, the accusation clear as daylight. “The rest– I don't know. But you're a little too interested to be just a mutual one-off."  
  
"I don't have one-offs."  
  
"Then I'm not gonna find him naked back there?" Maxwell jerked his thumb at the hallway, his eyes hard little chips of stone, unmoved.  
  
Zechs shrugged. "I have no idea. Feel free to check as long as you don't wake him up. He's near collapse from exhaustion. Something his many guardians have failed to notice or correct."  
  
Maxwell was glaring again. He lasted only a few seconds before he accepted the invitation, rising and striding purposefully down the hallway. Zechs did not follow. He did, in fact, know what Maxwell would see– Quatre, asleep in the bed as he had been for hours. Naked. He did listen closely, but Maxwell was silent as a ghost even on the tiled floors. When Maxwell emerged a minute later, he looked subdued. Zechs did not ask, and Maxwell did not offer: he resumed his chair, and picked up his tea. Zechs waited quietly as Maxwell stared, abstracted, into the contents of his glass.  
  
It was Maxwell who broke the muteness abruptly. "Did he tell you what he did?"  
  
Zechs didn't dissemble, sensing he might finally get a little cooperation. A little information, and that he most definitely wanted. "He told me there was a killing and a cover-up, yes."  
  
"He tried to kill himself afterward. Did he tell you that, too?"  
  
Zechs nodded. "Yes."  
  
"This last month, he could barely get out of bed." He met Zechs’s gaze dead-on, defiantly almost, as if locking a target. "Exhaustion isn't the half of it."  
  
Zechs said, "Maybe I can understand him better than the rest of you sane people."  
  
Maxwell’s eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"  
  
"You're the one who was throwing around accusations."  
  
"Don't deflect that, tell me what you mean."  
  
"I think you have an exaggerated, skewed sense of what insane is or isn't."  
  
He scowled. "And I think you may be full of shit."  
  
"Yes, yes,” he responded impatiently. “You've made that clear. What are you so damned afraid of?"  
  
"Him getting hurt again,” Maxwell answered immediately. “Because I know I can't stop it, especially if he has helpful people like you barging in." He gripped his tea tightly. "He's the fucking walking wounded, Merquise."  
  
"We all are," Zechs dismissed him. He eyed the younger man. "Even you. Arrogant of you to suppose you're not."  
  
"Arrogant is pronouncing from on high when you know nothing about me, buddy," Maxwell snapped angrily.  
  
"You're not so very different from any of us that were there,” Zechs forestalled. “Christ, you're either in denial, or a liar."  
  
"Just because it's inconceivable for _you_ to move on doesn't mean the rest of the world has to hang up their lives too." He stood stiffly. "I have crap in the car for Quatre. I'll bring it in."  
  
Zechs watched him go, once again fighting intense frustration. It was increasingly clear there was some kind of conspiracy in the shadows, and that it probably reached much further than Zechs’s townhouse and one broken relationship. If nothing else, someone had supplied Zechs' address. He was unlisted and while he was sure there were plenty of people with access to that information, there was no-one in Maxwell's circle who ought to have numbered amongst them. He wanted answers, and he wanted Duo to deal with him honestly, and he wasn’t any closer to either of those ends than he had been when the man had arrived.  
  
Maxwell returned shortly carrying a bundle of folded clothing, and a small bag of toiletries. He held them out, and Zechs took both items, turning the bag over to examine its contents through its clear walls. There were pill bottles inside.  
  
"What are they?" he asked.  
  
"Anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety," Maxwell informed him, a touch sullenly. “The rest is private medical information.”  
  
"Something I should know, Maxwell?"  
  
"Plenty, if you plan to pursue anything with Quatre."  
  
"Then why are you so defiant about sharing?" he demanded, coming to his feet. Maxwell put distance between them immediately, his body language signaling his sudden wariness, but Zechs did not move out from behind the coffee table. “It’s not like you to be so petty.”  
  
"You jumped all over when I walked in the door!” Maxwell protested. “And you haven't done a damn thing toward assuring me that you're in a position to care for him."  
  
"He wasn't exactly flourishing under your care, either," Zechs pointed out, rather nastily. Maxwell flushed abruptly, letting Zechs know that score had drawn blood.  
  
"You know, it's hard to imagine why so many people hate you," the younger man muttered.  
  
"It's hard to imagine why so many people adore you." Zechs drew a deep breath to steady himself. "Look, this is getting us nowhere. If you're serious about caring about Quatre you'll help me help him. If you're not, you can just go."  
  
If he’d thought that would end it, he was deluded. If anything, it pushed Maxwell into direct confrontation. His expression went flat and dangerous, fists clenching menacingly. “Let me put it you to this way,” he said. “You have absolutely no right, and absolutely no power, to make me go away."  
  
"I think I'm the only one who can say that for sure, Duo!”  
  
It was Quatre. Zechs hadn’t even heard him coming, and judging from Maxwell’s flinch, he hadn’t either. At least Quatre wasn’t naked; he’d put on one of Zechs’s shirts, and it covered his bare legs to the thighs. He looked a little like a ruffled child playing in his father’s clothes, but there was nothing child-like in his face just then. His eyes were dilated, and dark, and they were furious. Of everything they'd seen of each other, the highs and the lows they'd both experienced since the night previous, Zechs had never seen fury like that. Zechs had the sinking feeling that he’d walked into water too deep to stand in.  
  
"Did we wake you?" he asked carefully.  
  
Quatre's head swung toward him. "I heard you talking," he snapped, low and poisonous. "I'm not stupid."  
  
"Of course you're not," Maxwell said.  
  
"Come sit down,” Zechs added. “I'll get you a blanket."  
  
"I don't want a blanket." Quatre glared scathingly between them. "What I _want_ is to be an active participant in planning the rest of my life, since the two of you seem to be listing out everyone I'm to be allowed contact with."  
  
Zechs gestured to the couch. "Then come sit down and tell us what you want." He was aware of Maxwell backing off, but he was more focused on the deep frown on Quatre’s face, and the oddly mistrustful look he wore.  
  
"You don't have to take that tone with me,” Quatre accused. “I'm not going to fly into a blind rage."  
  
"All right," Zechs agreed, keeping his tone bland and inoffencive. “And you don't have to be rude. It won't help any of us do this."  
  
"Rude?" Quatre repeated incredulously. "I walk in here to find you two fighting over me like dogs on the last dinner bone. I know how to take care of myself. I know who my enemies are!"  
  
He felt himself tensing under Quatre’s attack, ready to react as aggressively as the smaller man. He capped it with an effort, sensing it wouldn’t be the right way to control this odd tantrum. "Do you?” he asked evenly. “Who, then?"  
  
Quatre’s hands were white-knuckled fists. "Those who confine me. Those who try to control me."  
  
"No-one's doing that here."  
  
His expression darkened. He dismissed Zechs with a curt toss of his head, and stalked around him to the couch, where Zechs had left the clothing and sundries. He gathered them in his arms, and with a last burning look that encompassed both Zechs and Duo, he left the den. Moments later Zechs heard the bedroom door swing shut.  
  
Maxwell exhaled softly. “That was refreshingly mild," he muttered.  
  
Zechs rolled his shoulders to ease their rigid tension. "Was it?" he asked, in all seriousness. The episode had erased, at least momentarily, the brewing argument between himself and Maxwell, and he saw in the pilot’s face a like sentiment. And a deeper unhappiness, as Maxwell gazed into the hallway where Quatre had gone.  
  
"I suppose he'd say it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you," he answered slowly. He looked at Zechs. "I suppose you might say that, too."  
  
"No. I'm not paranoid." He picked up his tea, and drank from it; it loosened his throat and chest, and the coolness was welcome. "Though I do still wonder what your agenda is. As well as his sisters’.”  
  
This time, he knew he was getting an honest answer. There was no dissembling in Maxwell’s posture now, no attempt to hide or withhold. Simply, Maxwell said, "To protect him from the people who really are out to get him. But mostly to protect everyone else."  
  
"Which of those am I, in your estimation?"  
  
"He really asked to come here? And he really asked to stay?" Maxwell said, meeting his eyes.  
  
Zechs returned the look. "I said he was welcome as long as he wanted to."  
  
The other man nodded, and then the fight drained out of him. Zechs was left blinking, surprised, when a suddenly weary adult replaced the boy he’d been talking to. "He needs to stay on the meds,” Maxwell told him. “He'll feel worse if he doesn't."  
  
"All right," Zechs agreed, cautiously accepting that as victory.  
  
"I'll tell his family where he is. You might get calls."  
  
"That's fine. –From you as well, I imagine?"  
  
He didn’t need the little negative shake of the head to read the answer in Maxwell’s body language. "I'll do my best to keep my face out of your business. That little show a few minutes ago wasn't very ambiguous."  
  
"I heard your phone call with him. Every word,” Zechs felt compelled to say. “ _That_ show wasn't very ambiguous either."  
  
"You've had the tip of the freaking iceberg, Merquise. I've been dealing with this for years." He sighed. "I try," he added quietly. "Can you grant me that much?"  
  
"I'd have less difficulty if you weren't so interested in your piece of turf where Quatre is concerned that you can't cooperate with me."  
  
"I'm not thrilled that 'cooperation' entails rolling out the red carpet to your bed."  
  
Zechs seized on that, sensing a kernel of truth was about to be revealed. "Is that what this is about?"  
  
"It would be enough." But he didn’t leave an opening to pursue anything. He produced a card from his wallet, and a pen from his pocket, and wrote a number quickly. The card he passed to Zechs. "If he starts– if he gets any worse, this is a number you can reach me at. I can stay away until you ask for help, if you swear to me on your father's grave you'll call when you need it."  
  
"You don't have to stay away." He took the card, looking at the jutting, angular scrawl of numbers. "And I'll call."  
  
"Thanks." Maxwell cast a final look down the hallway, then squared his shoulders. "All right. Bye."  
  
"Are you still sleeping with him?"  
  
Maxwell hadn’t gotten more than two steps. He stopped, but didn’t turn about. "That's not your business."  
  
"I think it is, if it's your business that I am."  
  
He about-faced. "Fine. No."  
  
"Then why are you so obsessed with who he's sleeping with?" Zechs tried to catch his eyes. "Should I worry that you're in love with him?"  
  
"Of course I'm in love with him!" While Zechs stared, surprised, Maxwell laughed suddenly. It had a cutting, bitter undertone. "Try to keep up."  
  
He felt he understood even less of what was going on than he had before. "Then why are you no longer together?" he asked genuinely. And genuinely interested in the answer, because it was clear to him that Quatre had unresolved feelings as well. Maybe it wasn’t him with the agenda? Was this some kind of play? Or– how could people lead such complicated lives?  
  
"I couldn't handle it." Maxwell glanced away. "And I feel like shit about it, so I sit on his ass pretending to be just his friend."  
  
Slowly Zechs said, not quite sure why he was saying anything, "He believes something else entirely."  
  
"Yeah. That's abundantly clear."  
  
"Why do you allow it?  
  
"What am I supposed to do about it?" Maxwell hunched his shoulder. “Anyway. Call me.” He didn’t wait this time, but went to the door and let himself out. Zechs followed after a moment, watching through the window panes on either side of the door as Maxwell jogged down the steps and to the small blue car parked in Zechs’s drive. A minute later the car turned on, the engine a faint rumble from inside the townhouse, and then it pulled out of the drive, and turned down the street.  
  
Zechs locked the door, and realised he felt– sorry. Sorry for Maxwell.  
  
But no more enlightened. Not really.  
  
Eventually he made his way back to the bedroom. The door had been opened, but he didn’t go any further than the frame, leaning against it to look inside. Quatre was in the bed again, still wearing Zechs’s shirt, one of the cotton blues. He had taken up position on his stomach again, but this time he had several more pillows under him. Zechs wondered if one of the pill bottles had held pain medication.  
  
"Are you going to tell me what happened out there?" he asked the silent room.  
  
"What happened?" Quatre repeated, his voice muffled. But no longer that combination of belligerence and suspicion.  
  
I know who my enemies are, Quatre had said. Zechs didn’t have to think very hard to know where he’d heard that before.  
  
"You're angry," he observed.  
  
Quatre only sighed, an oddly defeated sound. "Not at you."  
  
"No?” He himself still felt on edge. Most of his days were a haze of apathy, a cycle of highs never allowed to dip into lows. And he had never liked these kinds of confrontations, twisted and layered and so dependent on the ability to express the right words and feelings. It wasn’t the clean engagement of battle with discernable goals, where adrenaline was the only high you needed and everyone understood what everyone else was thinking.  
  
"Not at him either, I guess," Quatre said after a moment. "Was I horrible?"  
  
"No, you were angry."  
  
His face finally appeared from behind one of the gold pillows. He looked far more tired, almost sick, and that made Zechs worry. "Can you rub my back?" he asked softly.  
  
"Of course." He finally left the door and sat on the edge of the bed, setting his hip against Quatre’s. He focused on the same muscle group as earlier, alternating sweeps with the heel of his palm and circles with the pads of his thumbs. Quatre’s back was stiff, resisting the pressure of his hands, and he knew that he was only causing pain. He kept at it, stroking firmly and steadily, and gradually Quatre began to relax. Physical distress. It gave ZERO an in. ZERO never let an advantage slip by.  
  
"Did you ever meet him before?"  
  
He discovered he could span Quatre’s back with his hands, as he laid them still for a moment. His hands looked like wings sprouting from Quatre’s spine. "Who?" he asked.  
  
"Duo."  
  
"No. Not to speak to. A few times at ceremonies, hearings. Wherever they parade all of us around to remind themselves the war is over and we're no longer relevant."  
  
“Do you regret meeting me yet?"  
  
He resumed the massage, pressing deeper now that Quatre was loosening up. "No,” he answered truthfully. “I doubt I will."  
  
"Tell me what I can do for you. Please."  
  
He thought about it as he began to work between Quatre’s shoulder blades, feeling out knots and attacking them one by one. At last he concluded, "I don't know what to ask for." Quatre rolled over, catching one of Zechs’s now aching hands and holding it, interlacing their fingers. It was a tender thing. "I never know what to ask for, because I don't know what I want."  
  
"It doesn't have to be big,” Quatre said. Zechs didn’t know what that look in his face was. Determined, but pleading. “It can be something small."  
  
He said the only thing he was sure of. "Stay."  
  
A real smile blossomed over Quatre’s face. It tugged at him, and he couldn’t help returning it affectionately. It was such an unreserved, so artless an expression of pleasure. He couldn’t imagine that he’d ever been responsible– accountable– for such a smile before.  
  
“Lie down with me?" Quatre asked him, his fingers a tender touch against Zechs’s cheek. Zechs went with the gentle tug of Quatre’s hand holding his, and together they settled to face each other. He smoothed a hand down Quatre’s hip, around warm skin to the small of his back, caressing now. And Quatre’s thumb was on his lips, resting there in something like a kiss.  
  
Nothing like the man who’d asked for a hit. Or the man who’d yelled at him and Maxwell in the den just a quarter hour ago. He supposed he didn’t need any more confirmation that Quatre was unwell, unbalanced, maybe as much as Maxwell seemed to fear. Did that matter? It didn’t lessen him, and it didn’t– it didn’t change that he’d reached out, and for Zechs, who was no prize, who was his own brand of deeply screwed up.  
  
Quatre was going to stay. Maybe another day, maybe two, and then Zechs would call Maxwell, because he’d promised he would, and Quatre would go back to his prison and Zechs would sink back into his. He didn’t want that to happen, didn’t want to be two ships passing once and never again. He didn’t know how to stop it, either.  
  
Quatre echoed his thoughts. "This can't last forever," he said softly.  
  
He moved his lips against Quatre’s finger. "Nothing lasts forever."  
  
"What are we going to do?"  
  
"Now, or when it's over?"  
  
Quatre nodded. Zechs smiled. "Do I sound too needy?" Quatre joked, but there was something changing in his eyes, growing deeper and bigger.  
  
"I don't have much experience being needed. It's kind of pleasant," he murmured.  
  
"I don't know anything about you. Not really."  
  
"Did you think all I wanted was a few hours in bed with you, Quatre?"  
  
"I don't know,” he admitted quietly. “We've only just met."  
  
"We've known each other forever."  
  
He won the smile back, softer now, with steady eyes looking into his. He slid his arm about Quatre, pulling him closer, and lowered his head until their lips met. It wasn’t much, maybe wasn’t enough, but it was all he knew to give right then. And Quatre took his stupid offering like it was all he’d ever wanted. When they separated Quatre’s mouth was red and Zechs’s lips were tingling and damp. He felt– really good.  
  
Quatre sighed, and traced a line over Zechs’s collarbone. "I wasn't sure you liked kissing," he said.  
  
"Neither was I."  
  
"If it makes you uncomfortable..."  
  
"I like it."  
  
"You don't have to. Not everyone does."  
  
"Do you?"  
  
"Yes. But only if the other person is enjoying it as well." He hesitated, and Zechs wondered, too late, if he’d been meant to confirm again. Quatre stroked his throat sweetly. "I can live without kissing,” he added abruptly. “This is... we have something more. Don't we?"  
  
"I'm not with you for the kissing, no. Or for sex." It wasn’t the right answer, and he knew it, but the right answer wasn’t coming. "I like you,” he tried again. “I can't say that about too many people."  
  
“I can’t imagine why, I’ve acted like a lunatic since you met me."  
  
That made him chuckle. "How does it feel?"  
  
"Crazy," Quatre said. “Ironic, since everyone thinks I’ve been crazy for years.” He concentrated on the movement of his fingers against Zechs’s stubble. “It's like I'm floating... I'm not sure what the right words are, or where to look, or what to do. And it doesn't matter in the usual way if I get it wrong, but it matters more, because you–" He cut himself off.  
  
"I what?"  
  
"I'm not sure," he murmured slowly. "Hear me, I think. Know me." His thick lashes were hiding his eyes from Zechs. Very softly, almost in a whisper, Quatre added, "I fought a war with Duo. I loved him even. But we– we never– there were always things we couldn't say. Things I didn't want him to hear from me. I don't feel that here."  
  
"You can say whatever you want,” Zechs assured him. “I want you to. I'm sick of liars."  
  
"How much truth is too much?"  
  
"I don't think there's a limit." A fingertip brushed his chin. "I don't feel comfortable not knowing."  
  
"You want control," Quatre rephrased.  
  
"Yes. Don't you?"  
  
"I've abused it whenever I had it. I don't deserve it."  
  
"I can't imagine that in you," he said honestly.  
  
"I like to think it's the worst I'm capable of. I don't know; maybe there's worse. I don't want to know if there is."  
  
"Out of control is worse."  
  
"There's always fate,” Quatre said whimsically. Seriously. “Or God. Or ZERO."  
  
Zechs shook his head, and caught the hand when it tapered up his jawline. "You don't believe that any more than I do," he disagreed.  
  
"They're just names. Words. Maybe my family are my fate. My father was my God. There are things we can't escape."  
  
"Your father is dead. Your family only has as much influence on you as you give them. You could stop, you know."  
  
"What would I do instead? Where would I go? I have nothing and I can't give anything back. All I've done in my life is pilot a Gundam and be my father's son. The world doesn't need me much for the first, and not at all for the second."  
  
"You're here now," Zechs reminded him. The lashes rose, and Zechs had a good look at the doubt in the green eyes. "You said you wanted escape,” he added intently. “You said that's what I was to you. Why don't you start believing it?"  
  
"I don't know. I– I think that– I don't understand yet. What the path is. What the choice is. It's like standing in a dark room, clinging to the hope that there are walls."  
  
That surprised him. "Is ZERO quiet?"  
  
Muscles stood out along his jaw as he nodded. He was scared, Zechs realised. And understood finally why Quatre hadn’t asked for a second hit. "You don't have to be sure of everything all the time," he admonished soothingly. "Anyone who says he is, is a liar."  
  
He was surprised when Quatre didn’t answer, but instead rolled to put his back to Zechs. Then he wormed his way backward until he was fitted tightly against Zechs’s chest, and he pulled on Zechs’s arm until he obligingly draped it about Quatre’s chest and held him close.  
  
"Why are you so cold?" Zechs asked. He meant to sound annoyed and gruff, but somehow he didn’t manage. He fumbled for the sheet with his foot, and dragged it up, tucking it around Quatre and holding it in place with his arm. He’d never met anybody who wanted as much physical contact as Quatre seemed to need. It was hard not to be aware of the way Quatre’s body, chilled as it was, was pressed against him; it made him too conscious of his own hot skin, of the way his groin was flush with Quatre’s bottom, how easy it would be to throw his thigh about Quatre’s hip and bring him closer. How easy it was to not do any of that, to hold without expectation of anything more, to be perfectly satisfied with this and nothing else, but only if he could have it for always, and never fear it being snatched away.  
  
It was like standing in a dark room, clinging to the hope that there were walls. Yes.

 

 


	3. Three

The call from Bolsover Castle came the day he sent Quatre home.  
  
It wasn’t from Treize– it never was– but rather from his adjutant, Captain Sainte-James. Zechs had gone to Academy with Sainte-James, and neither man had particularly liked the other. Zechs had been far and away the better soldier, however, and it was only Zechs’s resounding fall from grace that had allowed Sainte-James to even enter the presence of the august Field Marshall, his Excellency Treize Khushrenada. Sainte-James took every opportunity to remind Zechs that he had been stripped of his rank and dishonourably discharged– a pointless endeavor, as Zechs still regarded his desertion as the best decision he had ever made in his life. But Zechs was still a prince, still the one-time leader of a fierce and powerful rebellion, and still one of a very elite group of men to have successfully piloted a Gundam. There was only so far the petty little man could go before Zechs felt exerted to remind him of his place.  
  
The conversation today was peremptory. Sending Quatre away had felt like a defeat, for all that it was time, that he rather suspected Maxwell had been a step away from setting up camp on his lawn. They’d managed four days together, some spent talking, some-- doing other things. Zechs had spent four years carefully parcelling out his words, hoarding them away from those who wanted to pry them out– Treize, his sister, tabloids and biographers and politicians and talk-show hosts and the lunatics who thundered at their congregations of fanatics that he was the Devil Incarnate. In his self-imposed exile in a London townhouse, the only voice he regularly heard was ZERO's. Quatre, on the other hand, talked like a man emerging from solitary ready to purge his soul before execution. Words on words on words, in a torrent that would suddenly dry out, leaving Quatre staring at the wall, drained and silent. Then Quatre would turn to him, or him to Quatre, and they would try to find answers in each others' skin, lips, face-down and clawing at the furniture.  
  
And now this idiot wanted him to pay attention to something as vastly trivial as Treize’s desire to meet with him.  
  
He’d had to agree. Treize was not a man to be disobeyed, even when his orders came filtered as 'requests' delivered by an obsequious, self-important toady. But he showed up forty-five minutes late, dressed in blue jeans and a simple cotton shirt, and he made sure he was high enough to outlast the worst of it. They were impotent rebellions, accompanied by a sullen mood. In a final declaration of his irritation, Zechs left his car double-parked in the small private lot outside Bolsover. Not for the first time, Zechs regretted that Treize had been able to find such prime real estate barely an hour from Zechs’s own home. It was hard not to think it deliberate. Britain was, after all, on the periphery of the European Romafeller network, and the little island nation was home to worst of the grumbles about Romafeller’s autocratic practises. It had not been an accident that Zechs had chosen to live here, and he didn’t think it had been for Quatre or Maxwell either, but Treize’s motives were, as ever, unclear to Zechs.  
  
He was allowed through the door and directed to a private staircase by the butler, another man who was none too fond of Zechs. Treize was in his office today, a functional space made ridiculous by the profusion of Napoleon-inspired cerulean and golden jacquard. Zechs found it ironic that Treize spent his days surrounded by reminders of another soldier-Emperor who had endured a humiliating demotion delivered by his own people. He often wondered if the comparison was deliberate– Napoleon had, after all, emerged from Elba to retake everything he had been denied.  
  
He hoped he’d be there to watch when Treize had his Waterloo.  
  
The man in question sat behind his desk, several files open on his desk, and the elegant little screen designed to disguise his computer was humming faintly as Treize typed. Zechs did not knock as he entered, and couldn’t be sure if Treize had really failed to notice him or was merely ignoring him in punishment. After a moment, he cleared his throat loudly.  
  
His ginger-haired nemesis looked up immediately. “My friend,” Treize said cheerfully. “I’m glad you could come.” He touched the screen to shut it down, but left his files open carelessly as he rose, straightening his uniform with that familiar, studied tug to the hemline. Though he was entitled to a more elaborate uniform, one which would have displayed both his military and social rank, Treize had chosen to retain the simple blue and white standard of OZ command. It did, Zechs could grudgingly admit, flatter him more than other colours would. Treize had always cut a dashing figure, and surrounded himself with others who would compliment that image; Zechs himself, Lady Une, Lucrezia Noin. Even Relena Peacecraft, whilst it was politically expedient to do so.  
  
“What do you want?” Zechs asked outright.  
  
Now he knew Treize was ignoring his ill-tempered gestures, because Treize rolled right over that as if he’d never spoken. The Field Marshall crossed to the bar back that occupied the far wall, and returned with two gold-edged snifters and a bottle of coeur de lion calvados, a large apple nestled inside with the rich brown liquid. Treize displayed the bottle against the outside of his arm, one eyebrow raised archly. “Food, drink– whores?”  
  
It was an old Academy joke. They’d ranted in their day, laughed together at the fat old generals who truly believed that was all that was good in life. Back when they’d wanted better for themselves.  
  
Zechs said flatly, “No, thank you."  
  
Treize was pouring anyway. "Of course. I'm sure you have plenty at home," he added urbanely, replacing the cork with a little smile.  
  
It was another joke, and a fairly good-natured one, and he knew it; but it still burned. Zechs sat in the offered armchair, the same chair he always sat in during their little meetings. "You of all people know my tastes don't include that,” he retorted stiffly. “What did you want?"  
  
Treize turned those mirror-like blue eyes toward him. "You left the party before we could speak, my old friend."  
  
"I wasn't there for conversation, was I? You wanted window dressing. I fulfilled that role."  
  
A ginger eyebrow climbed. "You're very harsh on us both, I think."  
  
He gripped the arms of his chair as he arranged his face into a sneer. "One of us has to be."  
  
Treize sipped from his snifter, and crossed his legs at the ankle. "Then I take it you didn't enjoy yourself,” he murmured. He even sounded disappointed, though how he could dredge up the energy, Zechs didn’t know. He’d gone to a thousand parties and never enjoyed them, and every damn time Treize managed to look let down.  
  
He rubbed his damp palms on the thighs of his trousers. "Why don't you just say what you really want to?"  
  
"I want to have a civilised conversation, Zechs,” Treize returned mildly. “Just as we are."  
  
"Fine," Zechs muttered. Tightly he said, “It was a lovely party, thank you for inviting me. I apologise for leaving before we actually spoke.” The lines were nothing that he hadn’t said before. And Treize never failed to weather it looking unruffled, damn him, and amused.  
  
Treize drank again, a considered, graceful little act of raising the glass to his lips, swirling the brandy just slightly; a moment later his throat worked and the glass reclaimed its rest against the leather arm of his chair. Then Treize said, "You seemed to enjoy the company."  
  
Treize waited. Apparently Zechs was meant to supply further information, but stubbornness was setting in. He moodily– silently– informed Treize that he could wait until he mummified. He shoved himself to his feet and picked up the second glass. It held only a finger of brandy, a drink he did not and never would care for, but it was a disguise, a tool, as much as much as everything in this prettily decorated office was. He resumed his seat with a defiant slump, trying not to remember that he looked ridiculous doing such things in the face of Treize’s unwavering aplomb.  
  
When Treize had had enough of the quiet, he picked up the reins again, speaking as if there hadn’t been a silence of almost three minutes. "Our Quatre Winner has grown up quite a bit, hasn't he?" he asked with a small smile.  
  
"Yes, I fucked him. A lot." Where that came from Zechs didn’t know, but he said each word as if it were a stab with a sword. "I enjoyed it."  
  
But none of the strikes seemed to land. Treize merely raised his eyebrows again, and took a swallow of his brandy. Suddenly embarrassed, Zechs stared out the window, at the immaculate desk, at the glass he held, keenly regretting having opened his mouth. When at last he managed to get a grip on himself, he looked up with a smirk, hoping Treize would believe he’d only lied to be shocking.  
  
Treize answered as amiably as if they were only speaking of some inconsequential thing, the fine spring weather or yesterday’s stock. “He's a quiet young man, very shy. Uncomfortable at those little soirees, not unlike you."  
  
“Apparently." It was impossible to sit still for this. Treize unnerved him. Always had. Zechs discovered he had somehow finished his drink. He stood again for the bottle and poured another finger, then drank it down before he quite realised he was going to.  
  
Treize smiled magnanimously at him, and toasted with a tilt of his glass. "There we are. Two old friends sharing a drink."  
  
"Do you believe your lies, Treize?" he demanded.  
  
Once again his attack missed its mark. Treize laughed easily, resting a knuckle against his cheek. "More than I do the truths," he admitted.  
  
"How comfortable for you," he muttered bitterly.  
  
"A reflection of the times, I believe.” Treize had a calm gaze, such a calm gaze. Unnervingly like Quatre’s, and he could only be thankful for how different they were, for the way Quatre’s only waited, while Treize’s measured and dismissed. “I am no longer able to speak as openly as you do, Zechs,” he continued. “I treasure you for that privilege which I regret having lost."  
  
"We're all in hells of our own making, Treize."  
  
That statement, meant as an insult, only intrigued older man. The thoughtful look Zechs knew so well replaced the edge of teasing, and a moment later Treize nodded slightly in confirmation.  
  
"Another brandy?" he asked. He took the bottle and leaned forward, pouring for Zechs without waiting for the answer, then refreshed his own glass. As soon as the bottle was back in its place on the tray, he said, "It has been communicated to me that Mr Winner currently... resides with you."  
  
He gulped from his glass. The burn in his throat barely registered, but the brandy was helping. "With me?” he repeated. “No."  
  
"Oh?" He didn’t know how, but he’d surprised Treize. "The communication was rather urgent."  
  
That got his attention. "Who called you?"  
  
“A concerned relation of the young man in question."  
  
"I see."  
  
"I understand you placed a call to your sister..." Treize rolled his glass between forefinger and thumb.  
  
"Why don't you just tell it to me all at once, and I'll confirm or deny."  
  
"You are perhaps aware that Mr Winner is not well. His family are worried about him."

  
It seemed an honest answer to his demand, but Zechs knew it was nothing more than a gambit. They had played the game far too many times; even Treize only played by habit. There was no gain anymore, no winner. Just Zechs, the loser.  
  
He put his glass down on the small table that sat beside his chair. It thunked dully against the antique wood. "All of it, Treize, or I'm leaving. I'm not in the mood for this."  
  
Treize lifted a hand. "Did you fuck him, Zechs?"  
  
"That's not your business. Nor is it Relena's, or Maxwell's, or any of his overbearing sisters'."  
  
"His 'overbearing sisters' are his legal guardians."  
  
"Guardians. Has be been declared incompetent?"  
  
Treize set his glass aside very carefully. His tone was careful, too, and Zechs found himself leaning forward to listen. "I don't think he's helping his case by appearing to run away." He set his hands together in an attitude of prayer beneath his chin. "You might believe that you are helping him, Zechs, but unfortunately, you may really be harming him."  
  
"What's your interest in Quatre Winner?"  
  
"You needn't suspect me so. I have an interest in his welfare as I do in yours– as a respected comrade from the war, a young man of valour and integrity." Oddly, he seemed to soften a little, gazing at Zechs as he spoke. "A young man with troubles, and with enemies."  
  
"God." Zechs was disgusted. "This is me you're talking to, Treize. I know you far too well to believe that line of shit. Try again, with a little candour this time, or this conversation is over."  
  
His one-time friend and commander sighed. "There was a time when you trusted me, old friend."  
  
"And you know the precise moment I stopped. Don't you?"  
  
That hung between them. But what right did Treize have to look so sad about it? To steal Zechs’s anger, undimmed even now, and say with such visible sorrow, "Yes, I suppose I do."  
  
Zechs reached again for the bottle, and was given it by Treize. But he didn’t pour, only toyed with the cork and the paper label. "Trust is difficult to regain."  
  
"Will it be mine to win again?"  
  
It was strangely difficult to swallow. "I doubt it, Treize. Besides, you enjoy my mistrust more."  
  
"I enjoyed our friendship more,” Treize corrected gently. “And I regret its loss." Before Zechs could protest his disbelief, Treize waved a hand at him. He knew that gesture. The subject was closed, and any attempt Zechs made to pursue it would achieve nothing more than being thrown out of Treize’s office.  
  
That didn’t stop him from trying. Perhaps he was just stubborn. Or maybe he just wanted to be sure Treize didn’t get everything he wanted without a fight. "You haven't answered,” he said pointedly. “What's your interest in Quatre?"  
  
"I don't think you really know what you're asking."  
  
"Why don't you answer the question I thought I asked, then?" he pushed.  
  
He was surprised when Treize stood. He paced to the window and stood facing out the lawn, his hands clasped behind his back, his feet spread at shoulder width– parade rest. Zechs didn’t have the imagination to know what Treize saw when he looked out at the soggy, grey daylight that dimmed even Bolsover’s lush glory. He spoke in a solemn murmur, face ahead and expression no more revealing than a statue’s.  
  
In a solemn murmur, Treize shattered him.  
  
"Did you notice the mole on his abdomen, just above his left hip?"  
  
He felt he’d been sucker punched. There was no air, he couldn’t breathe; his head swam for a moment with the force of ZERO’s scream. A voice that wasn’t his own whispered, "You bastard."  
  
The ginger head moved a little, acknowledging him. "Why?” Treize asked simply. “For getting there before you?"  
  
Zechs was devastated, and completely unable to hide it. Not that Treize was looking. He didn’t have to. How many times had he proved he knew every weakness in Zechs’s armour? Treize had been able to play him since the day they’d met.  
  
"I was worried at first when he followed you to the balcony...” The epaulets shimmered in the lamplight as Treize shrugged his shoulders. “I should have known you better."  
  
He was on his feet and prowling before he even registered the desire to move. Treize’s office was large, but his legs chewed up the carpet in long, agitated strides. "Should have known what, Treize?" he growled.  
  
"I feared your differences would lead to hasty actions. I am glad to see you kept a cool head on your shoulders. But then, you always have."  
  
How the man could say those insulting things without any trace of sarcasm or irony would always be beyond him, but it did bring him up short, standing just before the potted orchids that framed the door. His mind was whirling, even with his body still. "He doesn't belong to you," he said.  
  
Treize turned at that. "Of course not. No man belongs to another."  
  
"Neither of us belongs to you." His insistence was for himself, though. He wanted to believe it. He needed to know it.  
  
It was all he could think about. It was burned on his eyelids as if he’d seen it himself. He knew it was like: the flattering comments, the overwhelming nearness. The knowledge of what Treize was going to do to you plain in that confident blue gaze, watching him undress you without ever touching you, until the inevitability of it stopped you from denying, from even protesting. And Quatre was everything Treize found so, so fascinating, the golden boy, fragile beneath the blazing strength, a tin soldier toy tossed aside by an uncaring world. Was it still going on? Was that what Quatre had been doing at the party-- answering his own summons? Zechs couldn’t remember if he’d seen them talking– had Quatre even rated that much? A true one-off, and Quatre sent home to Maxwell a little more used, a little more empty–  
  
Treize was standing in front of him. Zechs hadn’t even seen him move. His hand was on Zechs’s arm.  
  
"Of course not," he said gently. “Not if you wish to take my place.”  
  
Zechs met his eyes furiously. "Don't touch me."  
  
A moment passed. Then, in a crisp little movement, Treize removed his hand.  
  
Zechs drew a deep breath. “I can't believe you," he said roughly. "Is there anything you won't–" He stopped himself, barely. Forced himself to return to what he wanted, needed to know. "Who called you, Treize? How deep does this thing with Quatre go?"  
  
Treize exhaled almost impatiently. He gestured mutely to their chairs, the order implicit. Zechs knew what it was, knew he’d get nothing until he obeyed, but it was still a minute before he could bring himself to do it. The moment his rear connected with the deep cushions of the chair, Treize sat facing him and began to speak.  
  
"Are you aware of the training that the Gundam Pilots underwent, prior to Operation Meteor?"  
  
He could be civil. He could get what he needed to hear, if he gave Treize the reasons to tell him. He forced himself to speak politely. "Only what was available in the reports that came across your desk during the war. I assume they were incomplete."  
  
"Very. We have since learnt a great deal more." He leant back in his chair, and propped his chin on one hand. "Of course, most of it is classified, for their own protection. But it is perhaps pertinent for you to know certain things."  
  
"Because I'm fucking him, because I'm sharing your bedmate?"  
  
With that irritating gentility, Treize answered, "Because he has sought you out, and because, I think, you have come to care for him. Or have I misjudged you, Zechs?"  
  
"No," he admitted reluctantly. He had his anger locked down, buttoned away now. The jealousy was harder. But, damn it, he was sitting still and listening. "Tell me, then."  
  
Treize obliged. "The five pilots share certain characteristics. Troubled childhoods. Juvenile records, though you might imagine Quatre's wealth protected him from the law. There was no-one to protect him from his father. You know the type. He called it 'discipline'. It prepared him well for the resistance. We have come to believe that their training– truthfully it is a great deal closer to brainwashing, classic radicalisation paired with complete disregard for their physical and mental wellbeing. Their mission was essentially one of suicide; they were to cause widespread damage, to delete the heart of the Alliance and destroy themselves in the doing. Dekim Barton's original design seems to have been one of widespread damage followed by an invasion of colonial forces. As we now know, the timely revolution of OZ within the Alliance stalled his plans, leaving the Gundams were alone on Earth, and they were shortly rejected by the colonies."  
  
"Their training. Is there a particular element that concerns you?"  
  
"At least three of the pilots underwent extensive desensitisation training."  
  
"And you think Quatre Winner was one of them."  
  
"Yes. His psychological profile is strong evidence for that. In Quatre's case his family attempted to provide counter-therapy, with mixed success."  
  
"You're lying."  
  
Treize paused. "I'm very much afraid I am not, my friend."  
  
Zechs sneered at him. "Quatre's _problem_ has nothing to do with any training."  
  
"And that problem would be?" Treize asked him, sounding every bit as sober as he would have in a briefing; and Zechs knew that Treize didn’t believe him.  
  
"The five pilots were exposed to something far more dangerous. And so was I."  
  
He knew it was coming, but it still infuriated him when Treize only sighed and glanced away. "You're referring to ZERO."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And yet only you and Quatre Winner have claimed to suffer long-term effects."  
  
"We're not talking about me," Zechs retorted.  
  
"Aren't we?” Treize returned swiftly. “You identify with him."  
  
"Do I?" He glared at Treize, unable to rid himself of the terrible knowledge Treize had sprung on him. "Do you?"  
  
"Quatre Winner is not the only pilot to suffer from extended psychosis. We have helped another of the pilots to quietly withdraw from society.” 'We' meaning OZ, Zechs wondered. Or Romafeller? “Granted that Quatre has a family who are very supportive, but his status as a Gundam Pilot makes his case a cause for widespread concern." Treize met Zechs’s look gravely, and not without sympathy. "You know as well as I do that it was only their age which saved all the pilots from the same treatment you received at the close of hostilities."  
  
He felt himself pale at that. The nine months he’d spent in Valery Kazakov Re-Eductation Instillation had been beyond grim; he had survived by functioning from a numb state of disbelief through nearly all of it. And it was a miracle he’d got out at all. He’d been sentenced to twenty-five years in that Siberian hell-hole, and the single reason he wasn’t still there in his ten-by-ten cell sticking contraband needles in his arm was the man sitting opposite him, telling him Quatre Winner was one step away from that fate.  
  
He cleared his throat. "Why are you involved in his life?"  
  
"At the invitation of his family,” Treize said readily.  
  
"They invited you into his bed?"  
  
This pause was short, and punishing. "You make too much of something I think gentlemen ought not to discuss," Treize told him, as if he hadn't been the one to announce it in the first place.  
  
His stomach felt badly. And he wanted to be high, so high he’d forget he’d ever come back to Bolsover. "I need to know why," he said.  
  
"Do you? Why?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
It had begun to rain, finally fulfilling the dreary promise of the threatening clouds. Thick drops pattered the window in gusts, and it had gone chilly. There was probably a servant standing outside the door waiting for Zechs to leave so he could light a fire for Field Marshall Khushrenada, Hero of the Earth Sphere, genius, revolutionary, debaucher of innocents.  
  
At last Treize stirred. "He reminds me of you, Zechs," he said softly. "You are both wonderful, sensitive young men. Who have suffered greatly, and needlessly, and suffer still."  
  
That he believed it made him nauseous. And he wondered which of them, himself or Quatre, was the surrogate; he simply couldn’t comprehend it. ZERO was ruthlessly silent.  
  
"Is it really still going on?" he asked, dreading the answer, needing to know.  
  
Treize reached abruptly for his hand. "Please, Zechs, put it from your mind."  
  
"I can't. I can't, and you knew that when you told me. I hate that you still have so much power over m- my moods."  
  
"It's been some months. He was unwell. I was, in fact, surprised he accepted my invitation."  
  
"I hope you felt like a rapist when you finished because that's what you are."  
  
He pulled away, all but snatched his hand back, and watched as Treize’s face went abruptly closed, shutting him out. Treize said cooly, "You are distressed. Perhaps you should take a moment to calm yourself."  
  
Zechs turned away blindly, staring at the window without seeing it. "I know who you are and what you're capable to doing to a young man who admires and respects you. It never occurred to me that you would do it with someone as ruined as Quatre." He looked back, and found impassive eyes waiting for him. "I think you should leave him alone from now on," he said, deliberately, making his own eyes hard as steel.  
  
But Treize was unmoved. “Intriguing,” he said shortly. “I was about to suggest the same to you."  
  
"Why?" he scoffed.  
  
“Quatre has been years rehabilitating his esteem in the public eye. Years in securing his position as a young man of wealth, potential, and reputation. That is, I remind you, important to some people, if not to you.” Treize spoke with the curt voice of command; they might as well have been strangers. “It has been argued to me, and I begin to agree, that you might exert a rather forceful influence over the young Mr Winner, and your interference ought to be curtailed."  
  
"That's not your call to make,” Zechs fired back. “Nor any of his babyminders. It's his."  
  
"Any man, no matter how competent, can make the wrong choice, Milliardo."  
  
"You aren't excluded from that maxim, Treize!"  
  
The older man drained the last of his brandy, and set the glass aside. “I have done what I was asked to do. I will leave you to think carefully about how to proceed– and I suggest you do think carefully." He rose, tugging once on the hem of his jacket to straighten imaginary wrinkles. “Watkins will show you out."  
  
"I don't care for threats."  
  
"And I don't issue them." He met Zechs's look.  
  
"Then tell me, as a _friend_ , what was this conversation about, if not a threat to leave Quatre alone or else?"  
  
“A warning,” Treize said. “No action is committed without consequences. This was a... friendly attempt to make you aware of the circumstances in which you have placed yourself. You must decide alone how to proceed."  
  
"I am not deserting him." Zechs stood as well, and turned toward the door, fully intending to storm out of the god-damn castle. Treize’s voice stopped him as he laid his hand on the latch.  
  
"Your loyalty has always been above reproach– even when you must give it from afar."  
  
Zechs stilled, staring at the oak panels as a chill crept up his spine. Treize had had the power to release the most reviled man in the Earth Sphere from prison; he could send him back again.  
  
"I appreciate your candour,” he said hollowly, with great difficulty. “Goodbye, Treize."  
  
He inclined his head. "Goodbye, old friend."

 

  
**

 

  
He hadn’t left his couch in nearly three days. It hadn’t been this bad since before Treize had come to Bolsover. It was always hard after he’d left the other man, whether they slept together or not, but even anaesthesia couldn’t touch the black hole that had opened in his core. ZERO was only too eager to fill the void, supplying endlessly darker imaginings of what Treize was doing with him– to him– what he wanted from Zechs. The threat had been far too clear, however Treize chose to phrase it. He desperately wanted to call Quatre, to whisk him away to someplace safe where they could be alone, could hide from all the things that bound them together. At the same time he was afraid that Quatre would call him. The existence of a conspiracy was obvious, maddening, but it wasn’t just that. There was Quatre himself; and Zechs had enough to do with one addiction without volunteering himself another.  
  
The end of the first day found him vomiting in his bathroom, a shivering wreck with chest pains and a headache so horrible he had wept from the pain. Knowing he’d been close to an overdose was enough persuasion to back off on the Cloud 9, but the alternative was being coherent enough to think. He lay on the couch and tortured himself by imagining everything going wrong, himself back in prison, Quatre in prison, wilting from the abuse of the other inmates, shrivelling in the unbearable isolation, in the cold, both of them dying there when they should have been free, and healthy, and happy.  
  
On the fourth day, the phone rang.  
  
It was the first sound he’d heard in days that did not come from himself, and it nearly startled him into a heart attack. He stumbled into the kitchen as the jarring rings continued. His coordination was gone after so many hours of self-debasement, and he knocked the receiver off the base with an errant swing of his hand. By some miracle he managed to catch it before it hit the floor. His heart hammered hard for a moment, before deciding the excitement was over. He stuck the receiver to his ear, and barked, "Yes?"  
  
 _"Hello. Hi. It's Duo Maxwell."_  
  
Sudden terror hit him. "Is Quatre all right?" he demanded.  
  
Maxwell sounded surprised, then cautious. _"No, yeah. I mean, he's fine. He's okay."_  
  
"Where is he?"  
  
 _"At home. He-- I-- Well, I thought maybe you would come over. For dinner."_  
  
His brain was having trouble catching up. "Why?" he said finally.  
  
 _"... to eat. With us."_  
  
He shook his head impatiently, forgetting Maxwell couldn’t see him. "No, I mean, why are you calling me? Inviting me. When you were here you were very clear in your desire to keep Quatre and I separated."  
  
 _"Yeah. Well. I've been outvoted."_  
  
And not, judging from his tone, thrilled about it. Zechs glared at the dust on the potted plant he stood beside, and snapped, "Who in this conspiracy actually gets votes, I wonder? Relena, the mysterious sisters? Treize? I would think they'd all be arrayed against me." He heard a breath indrawn, and interrupted hastily, "Never mind. What time?"  
  
 _"Half six. We’re off the A619 in Whitwell, about an hour from you."_ Maxwell hesitated. _"Look, don't get any ideas. This would be dinner. Two hours. We sit. We talk. We eat something. We all go home to separate beds."_  
  
"Fine. Whatever you want."  
  
He’d succeeded in annoying the other man, somehow. _"Do you want to come or not? Because if you don't, don't string him along."_  
  
"I didn't say I wasn't coming. I want to." He fumbled behind him for the edge of the kitchen table, and leant against it. "I'm just questioning your motives. None of you, aside from Quatre, have given me reason to feel comfortable with any of this."  
  
 _"Yeah, life is tough. Be on time. Wear something nice-- he will."_  
  
Zechs snorted. "Right,” he said, giving up. “I will." Then, grudgingly and softly, he added, "You can't be happy about this. Thank you for cooperating."  
  
He didn’t expect a gracious reply, and he didn’t get one. Instead he heard an embarrassed mumble, and a moment later a click announcing the end of the call.   
  
Zechs stared at the receiver, strongly considering leaving it off the hook for the rest of his life. Maxwell had called him– why? At Quatre’s insistence? Which meant that Quatre did want to see him again. Good of Maxwell to allow it.  
  
Why the hell hadn’t Maxwell gone busting into Treize’s office to ream Field Marshall Khushrenada the way he’d done with Zechs? Or was that the reason Quatre hadn't been allowed out of the house for months? Maxwell was quite the little dictator– Zechs imagined he might have been fairly successful in limiting Treize’s access to Quatre.  
  
Why had that happened in the first place? The knowledge of it had consumed him for days in spite of the drugs, even penetrating his dreams at times. In his imagination, Treize was always the aggressor, though in the harsh light of day Zechs had to admit it was extremely unlikely that it had been rape. Quatre was hardly a virgin, and had taken the lead in their second bout of sex on the couch. But even if Quatre had been a willing participant, it didn’t lessen Treize’s culpability. Treize had a finely tuned sense of morality, and he knew when he was taking advantage of people– that was why he was so good at it. He’d said himself Quatre was damaged, and yet he’d gone after him, and continued to play games, arranging for Quatre to be near him, to be reminded of what they’d done together. And he clearly felt some proprietary sense of ownership over Quatre, or he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to warn Zechs off him, whether he’d been pressured by the Winner family or not. Perhaps it went a long way toward explaining why Zechs lived in relative freedom, while Quatre was restricted on all sides– but that left Maxwell out of the equation, and Zechs couldn’t discount his presence.  
  
He shook himself out of the quagmire of his thoughts, and went to shower.  
  
Half-six found him pulling onto a long, single-lane drive outside the small village of Whitwell. The card Maxwell had left him a week ago had the address of someone named Hiba Winner, presumably one of the sisters. Maxwell’s scrawl on the back included the note ‘Cottage’ beside the phone number, which, Zechs hoped, indicated they would not be joined by any of the family tonight. And sure enough, the lane reached a fork, with a small wooden sign indicating the right path led to a caretaker’s home. Zechs directed his car toward that, slipping into a thin woods on a downward slope. A glance to his left showed him a large mansion through the trees, a four-storey affair of Tudor architecture, blackened oak timbers and white plaster jutting out of a green lawn peppered with manicured hedges and banks of rhododendrons. The cottage itself was a squat brick affair perched on a bank over the lane, well out of view of the mansion. Zechs recognised the car parked beside it as the one Maxwell had been driving.  
  
He climbed the steps cut into the hill to the door, straightening his clothes and trying to brush wrinkles from his trousers. He was nervous. He’d dressed himself as he imagined Quatre would, in modern tailoring, a red cashmere jumper that had reminded him of Quatre’s scarf, and a pale suede jacket. He felt overdressed standing in front of this simple, plain house, and hoped Maxwell hadn’t steered him wrong. He wiped a damp palm on his trousers and secured a tight grip on the bottle of wine he’d brought. He reached for the bell, and depressed it.  
  
He heard footsteps clattering toward the door on the tail of the ring, then an abrupt silence. A moment later, the door opened, and Quatre stood there with flushed cheeks and carefully combed hair, and a tentative smile hovering on his mouth. He looked clean and handsome in dark brown slacks and a cream-coloured button down.  
  
Zechs returned the smile as warmly as he could, knowing it must look awkward as hell. "Hello, Quatre," he said.  
  
"Hi," Quatre answered shyly. But then he tossed his head and threw off the mood. He opened the door wider, and stepped back to allow Zechs to pass. "You look great," he added more boldly.  
  
He felt as guilty as what he’d accused Treize of. He’d fucked this blushing young man, gotten him stoned first. And yet Quatre looked up at him with trusting eyes, and invited him in for a date.  
  
He cleared his throat as he stepped over the doorsill, and said, "So do you." He leant close and kissed Quatre quickly, on the mouth, not quite dry or chaste, but almost. Quatre caught him by the lapel and held him there for a longer kiss. Quatre’s mouth tasted like toothpaste again, warm and cool all at once.  
  
Finally Quatre let him go. His face was decidedly red. "I"m sorry,” he said. “I know you don't like to kiss."  
  
"I never said that." He touched Quatre’s smooth cheek, then his lips. "How've you been?"  
  
"All right." He smiled. "I'm really glad you came."  
  
He would have pressed further, but they were interrupted by Maxwell’s sudden appearance. The braided man was oddly bohemian next to Quatre, wearing an untucked argyle jumper and trousers ripped at the knees and cuffs. He was barefoot, Zechs couldn’t but notice, and– and he was wearing a ring on the middle toe of his left foot. Zechs wrenched his eyes upward before he could think much about that.  
  
He pulled away from Quatre, and made an attempt to sound friendly and unchallenging. "Hello, Maxwell."  
  
Maxwell nodded at him uncomfortably. "Hey." He stuck out a hand. "I can take the wine for you."  
  
Zechs shook his hand first, then surrendered the bottle. "Thanks for inviting me."  
  
He’d caught Maxwell by surprise with the handshake, but Maxwell wasn’t down for long. "Yeah. Well, it was Quatre's idea." Maxwell grinned crookedly at the young man between them. "He likes the domestic stuff." He shuffled back a step, and added, "So, um, about five minutes?"  
  
Quatre smiled up at him as Duo exited discreetly. "Give me your coat,” he instructed.  
  
Zechs bent to nuzzle Quatre’s neck as he shrugged out of the garment in question. "You're looking well," he murmured.  
  
"Thank you." He rubbed his palm over Zechs's chest, playing the weave of the cashmere. He was blushing again as Zechs swiped his lips over the beating pulse under his jaw. He managed to get the coat onto the rack beside them before Zechs wrapped an arm about him and tugged him close.   
  
"I missed you," Zechs told him seriously. He’d been stupid to stay away. Treize had scared him, and Maxwell didn’t want him here, but Quatre clearly did. That was good to know. And damn them both, anyway. “Kiss me,” he ordered. Quatre obliged, bringing their lips together as his hands closed on Zechs’s shoulders. They were standing pressed together now, and when Quatre began to gently suck his tongue, Zechs realised just what kind of fire he was playing with. It had been so long since he’d been truly aroused, but his body knew what it wanted. He was breathing hard when he pulled back, his lips tingling, sweat breaking out on his neck and chest.  
  
"Maxwell," he warned on a groan.  
  
"Gave us five minutes..."  
  
Reluctantly he put a few inches of air between their bodies. "That's not enough time for what we want," he said grudgingly.  
  
Quatre laughed softly. He stepped back regretfully, running a hand over his hair to smooth it. Zechs did it for him, arranging the fine hairs with careful fingers, brushing his knuckles over Quatre’s cheekbones and firm jaw as he did.  
  
"So you asked him to invite me?"  
  
"I started with asking, anyway,” Quatre said.  
  
He caught Quatre’s eyes, and asked seriously, "Has it been bad?"  
  
"No... Just, not what I wanted." He hunched one shoulder. "I know it doesn't seem like it, but Duo likes you."  
  
Zechs raised an eyebrow. "Really."  
  
Quatre grinned. "Well, maybe not likes you, but he wouldn't have called you if he didn't think you were all right."  
  
"I'm glad he did."  
  
"It was a surprise. He just told me a few hours ago." His smile deepened, and his dimple made a showing. "It was a good surprise."  
  
Zechs returned the smile tensely. "Yes."  
  
"Zechs?"  
  
"Hm?"  
  
Quatre’s eyes searched his face, his expression puzzled. But he said only, "Duo's probably got the wine open now. Shall we?"  
  
"Wait,” Zechs interrupted. “What's wrong?"  
  
Quatre rocked on his heels a little. "I wanted to ask you that, actually."  
  
"I've just been worried about you,” he said. “Now that I see you, it's better." It wasn’t quite a lie; it wasn’t quite the truth, either, but Quatre accepted it. He smiled that gentle, special smile at Zechs, and Zechs tried very hard not to feel like a heel. "Let's go find him," he added.  
  
The kitchen was not far away. Quatre led him through a sitting room and down a few shallow steps to the brightly-lit kitchen, where Maxwell stood before a waist-height, ancient oak table chopping a handful of green scallions. Three glasses of wine stood on the counter behind him, next to a bowl of nuts. Zechs’s eyes dropped unconsciously to Maxwell’s bare feet, focussing on that silver band about his pale toe.  
  
Maxwell hurriedly wiped his hands on a rag, then handed around the glasses. Zechs took the one offered to him with murmured thanks. Maxwell held another to Quatre, and picked up his own.  
  
"Are we supposed to toast or something?" he asked gruffly.  
  
"I think just 'cheers' will do," Quatre started, but Zechs stopped him, raising his glass to the two men. "To overcoming," Zechs corrected.  
  
Maxwell turned abruptly away, to the counter and the nut bowl. "Dinner's on the table," he said flatly.  
  
"It smells wonderful," Zechs replied. He looked blandly at Maxwell’s feet a final time, and resolved not to anymore.  
  
Maxwell was talking. "Yeah, well, I didn't cook it, the guy who cooks up at the Big House did, they brought it over and I just warmed it... you don't really care. Go sit down, everyone."  
  
At least he wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable with the arrangments.  
  
The dining room was kiddy-corner to the kitchen, and Quatre led the way to it. It was an intimate room, barely large enough for the small table with its three settings, and a simple pine hutch and buffet. The dinner dishes were split between the two surfaces– char-grilled sirloin topped with cracked lobster, a salad of prawns, a tureen of soup that smelled of mushrooms, and a large platter of black bread and butter. Zechs took the chair he was pointed to, a seating arrangement that left Quatre between himself and Maxwell. Zechs sipped from his wine glass as Maxwell continued his awkward role as host, serving generous portions of beef and salad onto the china plates. When they were all seated, he ventured, "You know, I don't believe Quatre told me what you do now."  
  
Maxwell looked up from his soup bowl. There was a defensive edge to his voice as he answered, "I'm studying right now. I do stuff around the Big House for some extra cash."  
  
"Education is priceless."  
  
"I would have said expensive as fuck. Er, hell. Sorry." Zechs was interested to see that Quatre was not the only one who could blush prettily. Maxwell glared at his spoon as he stirred his soup with more concentration than it really required. Zechs found himself chuckling.  
  
"Fuck, yes," he said.  
  
Quatre was grinning. He buttered a slice of bread, and said, "Duo didn't go to school for long when he was younger. Consequently, he values it far more than I do."  
  
Maxwell glanced at him. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about the look, but it told Zechs that Maxwell had not appreciated that revelation. Was he afraid Zechs would think him uneducated? Or did he merely resent the unconscious arrogance in Quatre’s tone? They may have been lovers once, Zechs thought, but there were clearly unresolved differences. It must have been difficult, coming from such different lives. Though Maxwell made his way about this quaint country living as well as either Quatre or Zechs did, he wasn’t at ease with it, and it showed.  
  
Zechs picked up his silverware, and cut into the sirloin. "Some very important life skills can only be learned in school, Quatre," he said. Quatre dismissed him with a wave of his hand, but Maxwell turned surprised purple eyes to him. Zechs met them forthrightly, and silently conveyed an apology. Maxwell blinked, and then his gaze became appraising.  
  
Zechs chewed a bite, and decided the chef knew his business. "I don't do anything for a living, either,” he said. “I could never think what."  
  
"You could teach fencing," Quatre offered.  
  
"I'm completely out of shape." He speared a large prawn with his fork. "I don't need the money, fortunately."  
  
Maxwell stuck his elbow on the edge of the table and latched his hand over his braid, hunching restively over his plate. "Do you ever get bored?" he asked.  
  
"No." Zechs considered that for a moment. "How odd. Do you?"  
  
"Hella bored, yeah." He grinned fleetingly. "So bored I actually went to school."  
  
Zechs glanced at Quatre, but there was nothing forthcoming from that direction. Quatre was making short work of his soup, his expression one of abstract attention.  
  
"Do you like it?" he asked politely, a beat too late to be natural.  
  
Maxwell shrugged, and stabbed a piece of meat to push about the plate and into his salad. "It's all right,” he said. “I went to a Federation school back in the day. It was different then, all propaganda about the Earth. And for a little while in the JAP sector, when we were hiding out from OZ. That place was so unreal, like, fencing and dancing and crap. Now I learn useful stuff.” He used the tip of his finger to push the meat from his fork. “I might even try to get my diploma."  
  
"You should,” Zechs said. “There's a feeling of accomplishment in that."  
  
He’d surprised the other man again. Maxwell scowled down at his plate, and fell silent. Quatre caught his eyes, and smiled; then he rejoined the conversation, changing the subject cheerfully.  
  
"I was telling Duo about Treize's new castle,” he said. “Have you been in the Riding House? It’s actually the oldest building on the site. The original forge is still there. It’s a ruin now, though. They held executions there during the war, did you know that?"  
  
"Yes," Zechs answered shortly, and did not elaborate. He knew a great deal about that, actually; and didn’t it just highlight once again that the two men calmly eating dinner across from him had been his enemies? The executions had all been of resistance leaders.  
  
Quatre caught his mood, and hesitated for a moment before continuing gamely. "Treize was thinking about turning it into a museum, at last mention. I think he likes the idea of the publicity. Not to mention the extra revenue."  
  
That surprised Zechs. "Does he need the money?" Was Treize broke? If he was, it was news to Zechs. The prospect shed a certain amount of light on recent events.  
  
"It's an expensive business, being in the government,” Quatre said drily. “He probably spent a good fifty thousand on that party, just to get his face seen by the right people."  
  
"Champagne fountain." He didn’t add any more, disgusted with the thought.  
  
Maxwell snorted. He said, "If I ever have fifty-k in pocket change, it's not going to feed nobles in fancy dress, I can tell you that." He put on an expression of lofty noblesse oblige, and added with pretended generosity, "Although if you ask me nicely, Quat, I might buy you a sammich."  
  
Quatre laughed at both of them, even ripping a corner from his bread and tossing it at Maxwell teasingly. Zechs watched them play, increasingly puzzled. He did seem better. Healthy. Sane. But why? Was he taking the medication that he’d ignored while staying with Zechs? Was it being in a familiar home, or just away from the vulnerability of a brush with hard chemicals? Or had Maxwell been holding out the promise of this dinner date as a reward, for good behaviour? He ate slowly, using the mindless task as a mask for his thoughts.  
  
They adjourned to the sitting room after the meal, where Maxwell served them coffee in mismatching cups and abruptly left them alone. “I have to study,” he said. “I have a test this week.” He gave Zechs a look meant to remind him of the rules, it seemed, and then he shuffled backward into the hallway and disappeared back into the kitchen. Zechs heard the clatter of dishes and a faucet turning on a moment later.  
  
Quatre placed his coffee on one of the small tables, and left his chair to join Zechs on the short sofa. Zechs touched his hair, brushing back a cowlick from his forehead as Quatre smiled at him.  
  
"You seem happier," he said.  
  
Quatre nodded. "I'm so glad you came tonight."  
  
"So am I. I almost didn't." He hesitated. "I thought maybe Maxwell was better for you than I am,” he admitted carefully. “Tonight hasn't actually disproved that."  
  
Quatre’s smile disappeared into a frown, and his eyes became worried. "What are you talking about?"  
  
He shrugged one shoulder. "He's trying with you,” he explained cumbrously, “and you do seem better than you did."  
  
Quatre’s frown deepened. "First off,” he said crisply, “you're a pretty huge part of that. Second, where the hell do you get off deciding what's best for me?"  
  
"I haven't decided anything, Quatre." Their hands were sitting very near each other on the paisley sofa cushion, but he couldn’t make himself move to hold the other man’s. "I'm not going anywhere,” he said. “I can't. Don't be angry."  
  
"I'm not.” The line between his eyebrows eased a bit. “Well, a little. I don't like how you deprecate yourself."  
  
He stiffened at that. "I'm sorry, but this is who I am,” he replied coldly. "There are so many forces at work here. I'm still trying to figure out how to be and in which direction to walk."  
  
Quatre exhaled sharply, and turned his head to stare at the dormant fireplace. Zechs was sorry for the tension, but it made him angry. At Quatre, for trying to make him face himself, and at himself as well, for not being ready or willing. They sat in sullen silence as a minute turned into two, and he began to feel just a little chastened.  
  
"Duo says I should... I think the phrase was 'integrate this new relationship into the existing'... existing whatever. My life." Quatre looked back at Zechs. "Integrating aside, I know that– I would like us to see each other. A lot."  
  
"He told you to integrate me into your life?" That surprised him, that Maxwell really was making a genuine effort. And it was the opposite of what Treize had told him to do, interestingly. Very interesting.  
  
"I think it means something between regular lunch dates and drawing you a map to all the dead bodies,” Quatre said.

Zechs almost laughed at that. Til he remembered was a dead body. The man Quatre had killed. Any mirth in him died.

“What do we do now?” he asked, when the silence stretched uncomfortably taut. Then, on instinct, on some damnable instinct for self-immolation, he said, "You know you can come to me whenever you want, yes?"  
  
Quatre inhaled. "Yes."  
  
"Will you?"  
  
Quatre didn’t answer right away, and Zechs tried not to be disappointed; he knew exactly what the cause of the hesitation was. When Quatre finally spoke, his careful phrasing told him he’d been right. "I'll come as often as I'm able, until you're sick of me," Quatre said.  
  
"That isn't going to happen."

“Getting sick of me? You'd be surprised.”

“You coming to me. You don't have to pretend. I prefer you not to pretend. It's a step away from lying, and all I want from you is the truth. I-- need you. Your truth.”

The breath was a sigh this time. Quatre dropped his head to Zechs's shoulder. "Why, you do say the sweetest things, kind sir," he said lightly.  
  
"Not all-- most of the time," he admitted honestly. Quatre's soft hair drew his fingers, sleek and wispy as it was. Quatre seemed to like his touch, because he sighed again. In fact he turned his mouth to Zechs’s neck, and sucked gently, making him shudder.

"Let's just concentrate on this time,” Quatre murmured against his throat.  
  
He let out the groan that started somewhere south of his gut. Quatre sucked harder in response, adding a tingling pressure to the movement of his tongue. He pulled on Zechs’s jumper, tugging it out of his belted trousers, and slipped a hand beneath the fabric. A moment later he was pinching Zechs’s nipple, worrying it between thumb and forefinger, scratching with his nail. Zechs had closed his eyes without realising it; it was the jerk of his hips off the couch that forced him to pay attention. "Quatre," he said, trying to keep quiet.  
  
Teeth nipped the juncture of his neck and shoulder in time with a particularly hard tweak that went straight to his groin.  
  
He was holding Quatre’s head to his chest, and he had to force himself to stop pressing down on the skull under his palm. "I'm going to want you to come home with me,” he said in a rush.  
  
The fingers moved to his other nipple, rolling it back and forth. "You could stay here." Quatre licked at the dip between his collarbones.  
  
"With you and Maxwell?"  
  
"It's not like we sleep in the same bedroom... " Quatre sucked hard enough to raise blood, and his other hand was inching down the back of Zechs' trousers. "He might even go out."  
  
"You won't feel uncomfortable?" he tried, a last resort he didn’t really expect to work. Clearly Quatre was not at all uncomfortable, but Zechs was. He wasn’t blind to the way he was being manipulated. Quatre must have agreed to a long list of rules before Zechs had even been allowed through the door, and leaving the house clearly violated that list. He felt like the interloper– like a thief. Since Maxwell had admitted that he was in love with Quatre, and the way he’d tried so hard tonight to be a good friend and make room for Zechs, it felt a little wrong to do this– especially under the same roof with Maxwell. Yet, he did want to be with Quatre, and Quatre wasn’t sitting in that room rubbing all over Maxwell’s chest.  
  
Beneath it was ZERO’s snide whisper, confirming the worst of it. He wasn’t honourable enough to stop himself from taking what was so willingly offered.  
  
He swallowed down the worst of the need. "Hold that thought,” he said, gently detaching Quatre’s arms from his torso. “I need the loo."  
  
Quatre’s expression was one of priceless confusion, but politeness won out. "Oh– all right,” he said, sinking back in the softa. “Down the hall."  
  
Zechs stood, untucking his jumper the rest of the way to add a layer of fabric between his arousal and plain view. There was nothing to do about any marks Quatre might have left on his neck, unfortunately. He smiled awkwardly at the young man who sat looking at him with a mixture of impatience and amusement, and then he left the room.  
  
The kitchen noises had stopped, but the light was still on. Zechs stopped in the doorway. Maxwell was drying dishes slowly, his head bowed as if he were deep in thought. But he looked up immediately when Zechs cleared his throat.  
  
Without preamble, Zechs said, "Quatre invited me to stay tonight."  
  
Maxwell’s face went blank. A moment later his throat moved, pale in the overhead light. "Oh," he said cautiously.  
  
"I'm not sure either of us will be comfortable with that.”  
  
Maxwell swallowed again. Zechs couldn’t help but feel responsible for the hurt the younger man was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide. He pulled another plate from the sink and dried it rapidly with his towel. "So what do you want me to do?" he asked gruffly.  
  
"I don't know,” Zechs said honestly. “What do you want me to do?"  
  
Red was creeping up Maxwell’s neck. "I can... head up to the Big House. Sometimes I sleep there anyway."  
  
Zechs shook his head. "I won't put you out of your own bed."  
  
"Yeah, well, it's your bed now, isn't it?" Maxwell snapped back. He thrust the plate onto the rack and pulled the plug from the sink. The sucking sound of water emptying into the drain started as he dried his hands with furious movements.  
  
Zechs glared at him. "It was my impression that it had been his alone for some time," he said pointedly. Though that was untrue, wasn't it? Whether Maxwell had been in Quatre's bed was immaterial. Treize had been there. Was that why Maxwell was so primed for attack on a rival? He'd been pushed aside once already. And along came Zechs, who in Maxwell's eyes must be essentially the same as Treize. OZ, his former enemy. Noble. Educated. Assuming ownership of all they saw, including Quatre.

"No." Maxwell turned away so abruptly, Zechs almost wondered if he were lying– except that Maxwell hadn’t lied to him yet, even when it would have been to his advantage to do so. "Look,” he was saying now, “I really, really don't want to talk about this any further. I'll give you your space. But I'll be back in the morning though, and you'll be going home."  
  
Zechs moved aggressively to block Maxwell’s exit as another possibility struck him. "I don't want you punishing him with this if I stay," he said, allowing more than a little hint of threat to colour his tone.  
  
"Back off, big guy," the smaller man snapped, lifting hot violet eyes up to his. Far from backing down, he moved further into Zech’s space. "And don't you dare accuse me of deliberately hurting him, after I went out of my way tonight to make this easy for both of you."  
  
"You brought me here for this?"  
  
"No, but I feel like a rube for not seeing it coming, so would you mind letting me go lick my wounded pride somewhere where I'm not confronted by the thought of you two– doing whatever?"  
  
That had enough humiliation in it to be real. Zechs relaxed his posture slowly, signaling his own surrender. He said, "I'm not your enemy."  
  
"No, you're my replacement."  
  
It didn’t particularly shock Zechs much to find that Duo felt that way, but it seemed to come as a surprise to the man himself. His angry pose disappeared as his eyes widened, and he took an unconscious step away. Zechs let him go. "And who did you replace?" he wondered.  
  
It was almost painful to watch the play of naked emotion over Duo’s face. He turned away again, picking up the discarded towel and folding it. "You're used to getting your way, aren't you?” he demanded. “You're a lot like him." Zechs didn’t reply, sensing that was only a feint. He was right. A moment later, in wretched honesty, Duo’s shoulders slumped as he leaned over the sink. "I feel like I'm losing him. Okay? And it sucks, but if it's what he wants, what can I do?"  
  
"To hear him tell it, you shoved him in my direction months ago,” Zechs reminded him. “If that's not true and I'm tearing you apart, I'll step aside."  
  
"Bullshit. Quat would rip me a new one, and then he'd go after you."  
  
"Fine," he agreed tersely. "Just as long as we understand each other, and you understand that you're not so much losing him, as letting him go." He rubbed his mouth, then admitted in a gentler tone, “And I understand that my day to be in your position will come."  
  
Duo’s head came up. That was not, Zechs realised, something Duo had ever considered. But Zechs had. At length. The thought had preyed on him, drugged or sober, whether a taunt from ZERO or his own gut. He could admit, as well, that he didn’t know if he would handle it as well as Duo was. He didn’t think he had it in him to invite another man to dinner, and watch Quatre turn that smile on him.  
  
Duo rubbed his hands on his ugly jumper. He ran unseeing eyes over the clean kitchen. "He takes his pills at eleven,” he told Zechs. “Please be sure he does."  
  
He nodded, though Duo wasn’t looking for it. "I will." He paused. "And– I'm sorry."  
  
Duo nodded stiffly. Zechs couldn’t catch his eyes as Duo slipped past him out of the kitchen. Zechs followed until he saw that Duo was only going as far as the closet by the front door. He watched silently as Duo removed a coat and shoes from it, the little toe ring winking just before it disappeared into a boot caked with dried mud. Nor did Duo look at him before he left, just opening the door and walking out as if he were only going out for groceries.  
  
He’d said he was sorry, and he was. He’d known about Duo’s intense dignity long before they’d met in person. He himself had written the memo ordering the distribution of video from 02's retention awaiting execution on colony B3892-D– tape from his escape with Heero Yuy. Yuy had broken into his cell, but rather than immediately freeing his comrade, he had aimed a gun at him. No older than a cadet fresh in a Victoria Training Academy class, 02 had climbed with painful slowness to his feet to face his fellow rebel, and greeted his executioner with a raised chin and a smile of understanding. Zechs had watched that tape a hundred times, trying to glean the character of the mysterious pilots of the Gundams. Not long after that, he had gone renegade himself. Zechs had always felt drawn to the kindred spirit he recognised in Heero Yuy, and he had discovered much that was familiar in Quatre, but there had always been something about 02 that had touched a chord in him. Duo Maxwell was Peter Pan, ageless, and ancient, and curiously alone.  
  
But Duo Maxwell was not the person that he wanted to spend the night with. Quatre was waiting for him, and by now it would be obvious that he hadn’t gone to the loo. He did stop there, washing his hands and giving himself a moment to remember why he had come tonight, to think about what was going to happen, to imagine what it was going to feel like. When he left the loo he was able to smile easily.  
  
"Sorry I was so long," he said as he entered the room. Quatre was standing in front of the fireplace, fidgeting with a trinket from the mantle. Zechs came to a stop behind him, and slid his arms about Quatre’s slim waist, pulling him close. He bent his head to nuzzle the back of Quatre’s neck, kissing the fine warm hairs.  
  
Quatre tilted his head, and Zechs could feel his breathing quicken, but he wasn’t as willing as he’d been before Zechs had interrupted them. It wasn’t long before Zechs knew he had to address it. He turned Quatre to face him, gripping his upper arms lightly and stroking with his thumbs. “What's wrong?" he asked simply. "Did you change your mind?"  
  
"No," Quatre assured him. His eyes were blue, though, and Zechs was sure by now that this was a tell-tale indicator of his moods. Quatre stroked fingers over his sternum, but said abruptly, "Why didn't you just say you were going to talk to Duo?"  
  
"I didn't want to make you uncomfortable."  
  
"I would have talked to him."  
  
"I needed to do it," Zechs told him. He dropped his hands back to Quatre’s waist. "I'm taking something away from him, Quatre. The least I could do is be straight with him about it."  
  
"I'm not his."  
  
"He thinks you are." That wasn’t entirely fair, and Zechs amended it. “He wishes, at least."  
  
“Do you think I'm yours, then?" Quatre pressed.  
  
"I think you're your own." He said it firmly. "I'm happy you choose to be with me, but the point is that it’s your choice." Quatre did relax a little then. Zechs felt it, and brought Quatre a step closer, until their hips were pressed together and he could encircle the other man with his arms. “What’s wrong?” he asked again.  
  
Quatre dropped his head to Zechs’s chest. “I'm not... I'm not feeling like a very good person, right now."  
  
"Why?"  
  
But Quatre didn’t, or couldn’t, explain. He slipped away from Zechs to replace the little figurine he held on the mantel. Zechs didn’t let him get far, immediately recapturing him. "You're a good person,” he said. “It's not your fault you and Duo came apart."  
  
"I don't want to talk about Duo right now." His fingers wormed under Zechs’s jumper again, brushing cool and exploring against his stomach. Zechs smiled at the tickling sensation they raised.  
  
"We can talk about anything you want,” he murmured, “or nothing at all."  
  
"We have a night. I want to make good use of it." He smoothed his palm over Zechs's skin. "We don't have to fuck if you don't want to. But touching can be good... can be perfect."  
  
"We can do whatever you want." He mimicked the movement of Quatre’s hands on Quatre’s back, then dared to go lower and cup his hands around the round of Quatre’s backside, squeezing lightly where his buttocks met his thighs. "I like touching you," he said softly.  
  
Quatre smiles up at him, and his eyes were green and laughing. "Then get started,” he said.  
  
In answer he began to open Quatre’s shirt, taking his time with each button. When it hung open to where it was tucked into his belt, he bent to kiss Quatre’s throat, seeking the little hollow just above his collarbones. It was his favourite spot on Quatre’s body, a place of vulnerability, pale and soft. Quatre tilted back his head to offer it, and their hips came flush as he arched his spine. It was enough to remind Zechs of Quatre’s aching back, and after that followed the promise he’d made to Duo about the medication. He stepped back, leaving a final brush of his tongue against Quatre’s skin.  
  
"Should we go upstairs?" he murmured.  
  
Pink had stained Quatre’s fair skin already, giving him a vibrancy and innocence that made Zechs ache a little. He nodded his assent, and took Zechs by the hand. The stairwell was just outside the sitting room, and Zechs let himself be led up the creaking old steps, ghosting teasing fingers down Quatre’s spine as they climbed. When Quatre reached the top of the stairs, he abruptly stopped and turned back to face Zechs. Standing above him, for once the taller of them, Quatre touched Zechs’s face, and then his hair; and then he leant down and tenderly kissed Zechs’s forehead. Zechs couldn’t stop the little sound that escaped him.  
  
"You're wonderful," Quatre said simply.  
  
He blushed for the first time since he was fourteen years old. "I'm not,” he said huskily, “but it's nice you think so."  
  
"I do."  
  
Zechs kissed him fully for that, as Quatre’s hands cupped his face.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was the brain-child of my one-time writing partner, Marsh, who has since passed away. I have always said I would finish the fics we had worked on together, but the first step is moving them from LJ to AO3. This may exist in a few other places in different versions, but this is the most updated, as I'm doing some editing to remove the more wince-worthy evidence of my youthful bad writing. We never got past Chapter 9, so I'll see if I can get it to the end on my own.


End file.
